Two enormous volcanoes could be set to erupt in 2025 - should we be worried?

It's only the first week of 2025, and two volcanoes have already been making headlines over the possibility of both erupting sometime this year.

So should we be concerned about Yellowstone in the US and Axial Seamount in the Pacific Ocean?

Here is a rundown of the history of both volcanoes and the likelihood of either of them erupting this year:

Yellowstone

iStockphoto by Getty Images

Yellowstone supervolcano last erupted 640,000 years ago, and back then it created a 70 by 45 kilometre-wide crater, along with geysers - a hot spring that is under pressure and erupts at boiling hot temperatures.

On top of this, the last eruption resulted in volcanic ash covering what is now the USA and the lava spewed and flowed for miles.

In the time since the last volcanic eruption, Yellowstone has become a habitat for all kinds of animals - bears, wolves, birds, and elk - who live in the rivers, canyons, forests and mountains of the 8,900 square kilometre national park.

But could there be another eruption soon?

According to scientists, we should expect a massive eruption every 700,000 years, so we've got a while yet (around 60,000 years).

Though there's always some kind of volcanic activity happening, as there are around 1,000 and 3,000 earthquakes at Yellowstone per year on average and they go pretty much undetected as they're around three or less in terms of magnitude.

Magma, molten rock is thought to be anywhere between 4km and 47km lies beneath - with 489 cubic kilometres of it estimated to be close to the Earth’s surface.

Basalt magma is one kind, which rises from the mantle below due to its density and mobility and then there's the more explosive rhyolite melt where there is estimated to be 440 square kilometres of the thicker and steadier stuff.

A new United States Geological Survey noted that this is "an estimated melt volume that is one to four times greater than the eruptive volume of the largest past caldera-forming eruption".

But not to worry as these underground reservoirs are more dispensed and not as full as experts previously thought.

‘When we used magnetotellurics, we were able to see, actually, there’s not a lot there’, said Ninfa Bennington, a research geophysicist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and lead author of the study recently published in the Nature journal.

‘There are these segregated regions where magma is stored across Yellowstone, instead of having one sort of large reservoir.’

In conclusion, a Yellowstone eruption in 2025? Extremely unlikely.

And let's just imagine the hypothetical scenario that the volcano does erupt, given what we know it won't be as widely harmful as anticipated previously.

Axial Seamount

Oregon State University

Axial Seamount is located below sea level and is 100 meters tall with a diameter of 2km.

Out of the two volcanos, this one seems more likely to erupt given there are signs of imminent activity and the fact the last eruption took in 2015.

Now experts are saying the volcano has similar signs as seen a decade ago, and they have been able to measure this through a seafloor cable that picks up all the shakes and rumbles.

In particular, Axial's surface swelled to the same height it was in 2015. which appears to signal that magma has been building under the surface, meaning pressure within the volcano has increased.

At the time, researchers at Oregon State University picked up on this build-up and were able to accurately predict the outcome that occurred - all in all, a successful forecast.

There are different methods experts are using to further understand how volcanoes work, according to Valerio Acocella, a volcanologist at Roma Tre University.

The first one is applying artificial intelligence technology to what they are doing already, along with analysing data from before the eruption of 2015 to see if there are any signs or patterns that can further improve their future predictions.

So an eruption in 2025 may occur, and if it did Acocella says this would enable experts to "understand it better and that will help us understand other volcanoes, too".

But nature can be nature so there is always the possibility for something unexpected as Acocella noted: "There's always a risk that a Volcano will follow a pattern that we haven't seen before and do something unexpected."

Elsewhere, scientists finally reveal what really lies beneath a volcano.

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