DANGER OF ITALIAN VOLCANO, MT. MARSILI, ERRUPTING
this i s an article appeared yesterday on the major Italian newspaper confirming the Sananda’s message.
Researchers have confirmed that the Marsili, the biggest European volcano located 150 Km from the region of Campania ( Naples), has never been so active as before.
The submerged volcano, is 70 Km long and 30 Km wide and its magma chamber is 4 Km long and 2 Km wide.
It is 3.000 meters high and its pinnacle is only 450 meters from the surface.
The researchers have noted an increased frequency of hydrothermal activity that may lead the volcano to erupt any time.
The latest detections, say that the volcano it is not so strong and that its walls are very fragile.
A further increased activity, may result in a rapid collapse of material that would trigger a terrible tsunami that will destroy the coasts of the regions of Campania, Calabria and Sicily, practically almost all the south of Italy.
In Love and Light.
AM
Rilievi sul Marsili, a 150 chilometri dalla Campania. Si è formata una nuova camera di magma
sommerso nel Tirreno
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Il vulcano sottomarino Masili |
MILANO—«Potrebbe succedere anche domani. Le ultime indagini compiute dicono che l’edificio del vulcano non è robusto e le sue pareti sono fragili. Inoltre abbiamo misurato la camera di magma che si è formata negli ultimi anni ed è di grandi dimensioni. Tutto ci dice che il vulcano è attivo e potrebbe eruttare all’improvviso». Enzo Boschi presidente dell’Istituto nazionale di geofisica e vulcanologia, pur nella cautela, ha toni preoccupati raccontando i risultati dell’ultima campagna di ricerche compiute sul Marsili, il più grande vulcano d’Europa, sommerso a 150 chilometri dalle coste della Campania. Dal fondale si alza per tremila metri e la vetta del suo cratere è a 450 metri dalla superficie del mare. La sua struttura è imponente essendo lunga 70 chilometri e larga 30. È un mostro nascosto di cui solo gli scandagli hanno rivelato il vero volto. Intorno si sono osservate diverse emissioni idrotermali con una frequenza ultimamente elevata e proprio queste, unite alla debole struttura delle pareti, potrebbero causare crolli più inquietanti della stessa possibile eruzione. per fortuna contenuti. «La caduta rapida di una notevole massa di materiale — spiega Boschi — scatenerebbe un potente tsunami che investirebbe le coste della Campania, della Calabria e della Sicilia provocando disastri». Nel cuore del Marsili gli strumenti hanno dato un volto alla camera di magma incandescente che si è formata e che oggi raggiunge le dimensioni di quattro chilometri per due.
Marsili seamount: tsunami threat for Southern Italy? 30 March 2010
Posted by admin in Italy, Marsili, natural hazards, submarine volcanism, volcano monitoring, volcanoes.Tags: Italy, Marsili, natural hazards, seamounts, tsunamis, volcano monitoring
Mount Marsili is a 3000-metre high seamount beneath the Tyrrhenian Sea, 150 km south-west of Naples. Marsili is active and recent research has indicated signs of restlessness (see this 2006 paper in PDF), although the risks of any dangerous eruptive activity are very slight). In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the director of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Dr Enzo Boschi, has reminded everyone that Marsili is active and that there is a potential threat of an eruption/collapse generating a tsunami that would threaten Southern Italy:
It could happen tomorrow. The latest research says that the volcanic edifice is not strong and its walls are fragile. Furthermore we have measured the magma chamber that has formed in recent years and it is of large dimensions. All this tells us that the volcano is active and could erupt unexpectedly.
According to the article, observations indicate that hydrothermal emissions from vents around Marsili have become more intense recently, and evidence of landslides discovered by the oceanographic research vessel Urania last February ‘indicate an instability impossible to ignore’. Dr Boschi warns that a flank collapse at Marsili ’would displace millions of cubic metres of material, which would be capable of generating a wave of great power’. Marsili is currently unmonitored, observes Dr Boschi: ‘A network of seismometers should be installed around the edifice, connected on land to a volcano monitoring centre. But this is beyond the budget’.
And it seems reasonable to suggest that the budget is what this article is actually all about. Despite the new attention this story will bring to Marsili as it gets cut-and-pasted around the web, there is nothing substantially new here, as Aldo Piombino notes in a very comprehensive post published on his blog today. No new activity lies behind this report, and nor has the potential threat, such as it is, changed in any way. The novelty, he observes, is in public attention being drawn to the need to monitor Marsili, which has been invisible in every sense as far as the Italian public is concerned.
Undersea volcanoes tend to be out of sight and out of mind. Writing in 2008, Aldo Piombino called Marsili ’one of the least-known of the huge volcanic systems of Europe’, and argued that more attention must be paid to this active and potentially very destructive underwater giant:
It is statistically very unlikely that in our lifetimes we will see an explosion of Marsili, and even less likely that we will see a tsunami caused by a landslide on its flanks, but it is to be hoped that it will be placed under close seismic and geochemical surveillance, as with other active Italian volcanoes. I believe that it is necessary for civil protection and for science that one of the largest volcanoes in Europe is better understood.
Boris Behncke of the INGV discussed Marsili’s activity in the course of his Q&A on Dr Klemetti’s Eruptions blog last year, but also remarked that monitoring Marsili was not a priority for the INGV [UPDATE: in fact that is not what Boris meant. He meant that Marsili has not been a priority for the Italian authorities, Civil Defence, and the Italian public, rather than the INGV - see his comment at Eruptions]. Dr Boschi’s comments today would seem to indicate that that has changed. Aldo Piombino observes today that the technology is available within the INGV to monitor Marsili directly from the seabed using new broadband seismometers transmitting to land-based monitoring stations, and supports Dr Boschi’s call for full monitoring of the volcano. But that cannot happen without money, which is more likely to be forthcoming if the potential (and real but, it must be emphasized again, very remote) dangers of a tsunami-generating collapse at Marsili are stressed – hence the Corriere della Sera article.
So, it seems that a push has begun within Italian volcanology to get Marsili wired up for continuous and comprehensive monitoring. Let us hope it succeeds.
UPDATE 30 March 2010: Dr Erik Klemetti has more on Marsili at Eruptions, and Boris Behncke, himself of the INGV (Dr Boschi is Boris’s boss), has an illuminating comment here.