An Undersea Volcano Near Oregon May Erupt in 2025, Scientists Predict. It Could Help Improve Eruption Forecasts

Oregon’s most active underwater volcano could erupt this year, according to a prediction recently shared by scientists. The Axial Seamount, located 300 miles from the state’s coast and one mile beneath the Pacific Ocean’s surface, has been swelling at a steady rate for the past six months, with seismic activity totaling hundreds of earthquakes per day, according to an Oregon State University blog that chronicles eruption predictions of the sea volcano.

In November, scientists were tipped off about the possibility of an imminent explosion when Axial’s surface swelled to nearly the same height it had risen to in 2015—just before it last erupted. When this so-called ballooning happens, it usually means magma is pooling underground and pressure in the surrounding area is increasing, reports Rachel Berkowitz of Science News.

Researchers presented the latest seismic and inflation results on the volcano last month at the American Geophysical Union conference in Washington, D.C.

The scientists’ prediction shouldn’t be taken as a sign to panic—the volcano doesn’t pose a threat to people. But from a research perspective, this offers an ideal scenario to experiment with prediction techniques.

“People’s lives aren’t in the equation,” Bill Chadwick, a volcanologist at Oregon State University who is leading the research, tells Gosia Wozniacka of the Oregonian. “On land, you can’t do this forecasting without worrying about false alarms and freaking people out and having economic impacts. You don’t want to evacuate towns and all that without knowing for sure that you need to.”

As a result, he adds, the Axial Seamount is “a great natural laboratory” for studying undersea eruptions and volcanic forecasting. For the time being, reliable predictions about volcanic eruptions are rarely possible more than a few days in advance, according to the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program.

Studying Submarine Volcanoes

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The Axial Seamount’s current bloating comes as no surprise. The area is considered the most active underwater volcano in the Pacific Northwest, having erupted in 1998, 2011 and 2015. It sits on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, an underwater mountain range wedged between two separating tectonic plates: the Juan de Fuca Plate and the Pacific Plate. Such areas teem with marine life, including octopuses, bacteria, mussels, deep-sea crabs and tubeworms.

Axial is also the world’s most monitored submarine volcano. Because of its frequent activity, the seamount is home to the world’s first underwater observatory, called the New Millennium Observatory, or NeMO, per Oregon State University. Every shake, hiccup or tremor is recorded and sent to scientists in real time with a fiber-optic cable along the seafloor via a web of instruments called the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), reports Marley Parker for the National Deep Submergence Facility. Scientists have monitored the volcano’s rumbling and shaking through this cable for the last ten years.

Chadwick and his team also often travel to the seamount on expeditions to gather more data. Most recently, the 2024 expedition to the Axial Seamount repeated pressure measurements and continued documenting the inflation rates since 2015.

Today’s predictions of volcanic eruptions rely on recognizing patterns that occurred before the mountains last blew their tops. In 2015, swelling around the seamount happened a few months after experts began monitoring the site. The current level of inflation has reached about 95 percent of the amount seen before 2015’s eruption, according to the presented research, and seismic activity is elevated like before. Other researchers have been using artificial intelligence to analyze the earthquakes from the 2015 eruption to better predict when the next explosion might happen, per Science News.

“If you can develop a model for how this works at Axial, it gives us a starting point that we can apply elsewhere, and with a few tweaks, we can begin working on forecasts of other volcanoes,” Michael Poland, a research geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Cascades Volcano Observatory who was not involved in the research, tells the Oregonian.

Still, forecasting volcanic activity is not always easy, and eruptions can be unpredictable, even with data. “There’s always the risk that a volcano will follow a pattern that we haven’t seen before and do something unexpected,” Poland says to Science News.

When the Axial Seamount does erupt, it won’t be showy. The structure is considered a shield volcano, meaning it won’t explode in fiery glory. Instead, it will ooze lava once enough pressure cracks the surface open, as Jes Burns wrote for Oregon Public Broadcasting last year. Regardless of when Axial erupts, it will provide researchers with more knowledge about how volcanoes behave, what clues exist before an eruption and the aftermath.

“We learn the most from volcanoes by catching them in the act,” Chadwick tells the National Deep Submergence Facility. “A big part of our work here is to ensure everything is in place for the next eruption.”

Elizabeth Gamillo | | READ MORE

Elizabeth Gamillo is a correspondent for Smithsonian and a science journalist based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has written for Science magazine as their 2018 AAAS Diverse Voices in Science Journalism Intern.