Scientists used fashionable imaging ways to review the 1650 Kolumbo underwater volcano eruption, revealing {that a} landslide adopted through an eruption led to the ancient tsunami. Their findings support within the development of submarine volcanic process tracking.GEOMAR researchers reconstruct historical volcanic eruption the usage of 3-D seismics.The explosion of the underwater volcano Kolumbo within the Aegean Sea in 1650 brought on a damaging tsunami that was once described through ancient eyewitnesses. A bunch of researchers led through Dr. Jens Karstens from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Analysis Kiel has now surveyed Kolumbo’s underwater crater with fashionable imaging generation and reconstructed the ancient occasions. They discovered that the eyewitness accounts of the herbal crisis can handiest be described through a mix of a landslide adopted through an explosive eruption. Their findings had been printed on October 26 within the magazine Nature Communications.Observations and InvestigationsFrom the Greek island of Santorini, the eruption have been visual for a number of weeks. Within the overdue summer time of 1650, folks reported that the colour of the water had modified and the water was once boiling. About seven kilometers northeast of Santorini, an underwater volcano had risen from the ocean and started ejecting sparkling rocks. Hearth and lightning might be noticed, and plumes of smoke darkened the sky. Then the water abruptly receded, handiest to surge against the beach moments later, battering it with waves as much as 20 meters prime. An enormous bang was once heard greater than 100 kilometers away, pumice and ash fell at the surrounding islands, and a perilous cloud of toxic fuel claimed a number of lives.
The picturesque panorama of Santorini caldera as of late. Credit score: Jonas Preine“We all know those main points of the historical eruption of Kolumbo as a result of there are fresh studies that had been compiled and printed through a French volcanologist within the nineteenth century,” says Dr. Jens Karstens, marine geophysicist at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Analysis Kiel.However how did those devastating occasions come about? To determine, he and his German and Greek colleagues went to the Greek Aegean Sea in 2019 to review the volcanic crater with particular generation.Karstens: “We needed to know how the tsunami took place at the moment and why the volcano exploded so violently.”
Two trawl doorways, between which a sign supply and 15 measuring cables (streamers) are towed in the back of the analysis vessel: This particular methodology was once used to create a 3-dimensional symbol of the Kolumbo volcano, which now lies between 18 and 500 metres under the water’s floor. Credit score: Thies BartelsScientific Research and Long run MonitoringOn board the now decommissioned analysis vessel POSEIDON, the group used 3-D seismic learn how to create a 3-dimensional symbol of the crater, which is now 18 meters under the water’s floor.Dr. Gareth Crutchley, co-author of the find out about: “This permits us to appear throughout the volcano.” Now not handiest did the 3-D imaging display that the crater was once 2.5 kilometers in diameter and 500 meters deep, suggesting a actually huge explosion, the seismic profiles additionally printed that one flank of the cone have been seriously deformed.Crutchley: “This a part of the volcano has surely slipped.” The researchers then took a detective’s manner, evaluating the quite a lot of mechanisms that may have led to the tsunami with the ancient eyewitness accounts. They concluded that just a aggregate of a landslide adopted through a volcanic explosion may just give an explanation for the tsunami. Their findings are printed within the magazine Nature Communications.
Those sections in the course of the seismic quantity display the geological constructions that document the historical past of the crater. Credit score: Karstens et al. 2023By combining 3-D seismics with laptop simulations, the researchers had been in a position to reconstruct how prime the waves would had been if they’d been generated through the explosion by myself.Karstens: “In line with this, waves of six meters would had been anticipated at one specific location, however we all know from the studies of eyewitnesses that they had been 20 meters prime there.”Moreover, the ocean is claimed to have first receded at every other level, however within the laptop simulation a wave crest reaches the coast first. Thus, the explosion by myself can’t give an explanation for the tsunami tournament. On the other hand, when the landslide was once incorporated within the simulations, the knowledge agreed with ancient observations.Jens Karstens explains: “Kolumbo is composed partially of pumice with very steep slopes. It isn’t very strong. Right through the eruption, which have been happening for a number of weeks, lava was once ceaselessly ejected. Beneath, within the magma chamber, which contained numerous fuel, there was once huge power. When one of the vital volcano’s flanks slipped, the impact was once like uncorking a bottle of champagne: the surprising unlock of power allowed the fuel within the magma gadget to enlarge, leading to an enormous explosion.”One thing equivalent may have took place all over the 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga undersea volcano, whose volcanic crater has a equivalent form to Kolumbo’s.
The penultimate expedition of the now decommissioned RV POSEIDON went to the Greek Aegean Sea, the place German and Greek scientists investigated the underwater volcano Kolumbo, which erupted in 1650. Credit score: Paraskevi NomikouThe find out about thus supplies precious data for the advance of tracking techniques for energetic submarine volcanic process, akin to SANTORY, which is led through co-author Prof. Dr. Paraskevi Nomikou of the Nationwide and Kapodistrian College of Athens (NKUA). “We are hoping so that you could use our effects to broaden new approaches to watch volcanic unrest,” says Jens Karstens, “perhaps even an early caution gadget, amassing knowledge in real-time. That might be my dream.”About 3-D Marine Mirrored image Seismics3D seismics is a geophysical methodology that exploits the truth that sound waves are in part mirrored on the barriers of layers. This makes it conceivable to create cross-sectional profiles of geological constructions underneath the seabed. Not like 2D mirrored image seismics, marine 3-D mirrored image seismics makes use of more than one measuring cables (housing receivers) towed in parallel in the back of the analysis vessel. The result’s a 3-dimensional symbol, referred to as a seismic quantity, which permits us to appear underneath the seafloor and analyze the geology intimately.Reference: “Cascading occasions all over the 1650 tsunamigenic eruption of Kolumbo volcano” through Jens Karstens, Gareth J. Crutchley, Thor H. Hansteen, Jonas Preine, Steven Carey, Judith Elger, Michel Kühn, Paraskevi Nomikou, Florian Schmid, Giacomo Dalla Valle, Karim Kelfoun and Christian Berndt, 26 October 2023, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42261-y
