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Mount Spurr, a volcano near Alaska’s largest city, Anchorage, is showing strong signs that it could erupt based on observations made over the past 10 months. Hundreds of small earthquakes that have occurred beneath Mount Spurr lend credence to the concerns.
According to CNN, Mount Spurr is located in the volcanically active Aleutian Arc. Because of that, the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which tracks volcanic activity across the state, has been keeping a close eye on it.
One of the things they have noticed of late is that surrounding areas are being heated up by rising magma and other moving fluids on the way to the surface.
“Basically, as we think magma and fluids rise within the earth, it causes the ground to swell or deform,” said David Fee, a coordinating scientist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory. “These are our two key longer-term observations telling us that something is going on underneath.”
Another sign that has the Alaska Volcano Observatory on alert is that, according to Fee, “A small lake has formed within the crater, and there’s some warmer water and gas coming out.” Based on this and other evidence, Fee says, the scientists can “use a lot of our knowledge from past eruptions to kind of see what we think might happen in the future.”
That being said, they still don’t know when or if the Mount Spurr volcano will erupt. It could be a matter of days or several months. The more they see raised water temperatures and melted snow and glaciers, the more likely an eruption is imminent, Fee said.
While pointing out that the volcano, which scientists say currently has a 50% chance of erupting, poses “no kind of local threat,” if and when it erupts it will create ash clouds that could impact air travel and cause other issues.
“One or more explosive events lasting one or a few hours would produce ash clouds carried downwind for hundreds of miles, and the uninhabited area around Mount Spurr would be inundated by pyroclastic flows, mudflows, and ballistic showers,” the Alaska Volcano Observatory said in a recent statement.
Mount Spurr previously erupted in 1953 and 1992. In 1992, the observatory’s statement explains, the signs that the volcano was about to erupt included an “increase in the number of earthquakes, onset of sustained seismic tremor, increased gas emissions, changes in surface deformation, and melting of snow and ice. In 1992, such changes occurred about three weeks prior to the first eruption.”