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VOLCANOLOGY

Long-term eruption forecasting

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 516–517 (2022)Cite this article

Unrest episodes observed in basaltic systems indicate magma influx rates may be key to generating long-term eruption forecasts. The findings predict that, if a critical flow rate is surpassed, a volcano will erupt within a year.

Globally, more than 800 million people live within approximately 100 km of an active volcano1. Forecasting volcanic eruptions is therefore a key component of natural disaster mitigation. However, eruption forecasting on timescales greater than a few weeks is currently very difficult, and improving our ability to forecast the onset, size, duration, and hazard of eruptions remains a grand challenge within volcanology2. Eruption forecasts weeks to months in advance would allow for assessment of global consequences in areas such as shipping, travel, climate, and public health as well as more local preparation, and even potential evacuation, of people living near the volcano. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Galetto and colleagues3 combine theory with observations of volcanic unrest to identify a critical threshold for magma influx rates that determined the eruptive fate of the system within the coming year.

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Fig. 1: The rate of magma inflow determines the eruptive fate of volcanic unrest.

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  1. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Tushar Mittal

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  1. Tushar Mittal
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Correspondence to Tushar Mittal.

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Mittal, T. Long-term eruption forecasting. Nat. Geosci. 15, 516–517 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00973-8

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