Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
The July 30 8.8 magnitude earthquake near the Kamchatka Peninsula has triggered a series of volcanic activity in Russia.
Officials report the rare event of six eruptions since the earthquake.
The Ring of Fire was active before the quake, but has become increasingly spirited since.
One of the largest earthquakes recorded in modern-day history has seemingly set off a cluster of volcanoes in Russia, with six separate volcanoes near the Kamchatka Peninsula erupting since the late-July quake, and a seventh shows signs it might join the party.
A July 30 earthquake with a magnitude of 8.8 was the strongest earthquake off the coast of Russia since 1952, according to the Russia Academy of Sciences. The U.S. Geological Survey called it the sixth-largest earthquake ever recorded by modern seismic instruments, part of an active sequence of activity that saw 50 earthquakes with a 5.0 magnitude or larger in the 10 days leading to the July 30 event.
That may have been enough to spur the activity of the six Ring of Fire-adjacent volcanoes in the area, Alexey Ozerov, member of the Russia Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, told Russian state media according to ABC News. “We attribute the eruptions to the earthquake, which activated the magmatic foci and provided them with additional energy,” he says. This is the first time in roughly 300 years that this many volcanoes have set off at the same time in such tight proximity, with Ozerov adding that the event is an “extremely rare phenomenon that can be described as a parade of volcanic eruptions.”
The Krasheninnikov volcano, one of eight active volcanoes of the Kronotsky Reserve and about 150 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter, according to Vsevolod Yakovlev, acting director of the reserve, hadn’t shown a lava flow since 1463. It’s now active. And it’s showing a significant increase in the temperature on the Earth’s surface in the area, Yakovlev said.
Of the 29 active volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Klyuchevskoy volcano has been one of the most prolific since the earthquake. The Kamchataka Volcanic Eruption Response Team has held an orange code alert for the volcanic activity with ash exploding over four miles high and a plume now extending 133 miles to the southeast while lava and ash continue to move. “As explosions up to [32,800 feet] could occur at any time,” the team warned, “ongoing activity could affect international and low-flying aircraft.”
With no communities in the vicinity of any of the Ring of Fire volcanoes, there’s no threat to humans at this point.
The direct earthquake-to-eruption theory holds more weight when a volcano is already nearing activity, Harold Tobin, professor of seismology and geohazards at the University of Washington and director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, told NPR. “It is definitely an interesting coincidence … or not coincidence,” he said about Krasheninnikov. “It wouldn’t have experienced really extreme shaking. Nonetheless, seismic waves that are passing through the Earth are certainly affecting underground systems like potentially magma that’s in cracks in the rock inside a volcano.”
It could have added up to an increased force in an eruption or, as Tobin said, “shake loose the system that then allows it to actually erupt.”
Paul Segall, geophysicist at Stanford University, told Live Science that “it is not unprecedented for a large subduction zone earthquake to trigger volcanic eruptions.” Citing a 9.5 magnitude quake in Chile in 1960, Segall said the earthquake could change the stress in the Earth’s crust, making it easier for magma to rise. Shaking the magma can alter its movement.
If that’s the case, there’s a lot of magma movement getting altered right now on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
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