{"id":696347,"date":"2026-05-27T04:10:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T04:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/696347\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T04:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T04:10:14","slug":"when-quiet-undersea-volcanoes-turn-disruptive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/696347\/","title":{"rendered":"When Quiet Undersea Volcanoes Turn Disruptive"},"content":{"rendered":"

The deposits that blanketed the volcanoes\u2019 steep flanks were critical clues, Preine said. Water dampens how far debris gets thrown, as anyone who has ever tried throwing an object underwater can confirm. So the material from underwater eruptions settles close to its source. Once a volcano breaches the sea surface, though, it can scatter ash and rock debris much farther. This can go on for days, months, or even years. Then, once the magma chamber is exhausted, the sea takes over again.<\/p>\n

In Iceland, the sea is a force. Preine said the region\u2019s underwater flat-topped volcanoes are worn down to a uniform depth of around 40 meters below sea level \u2014 no coincidence, he argued, since North Atlantic storm-wave erosion only reaches down that far. \u201cThe key parameter here is depth,\u201d said Ross Parnell-Turner<\/a>, a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the work of Expedition M201.<\/p>\n

The influence of lower water pressure and the force of the Atlantic\u2019s waves seemed to explain Expedition M201\u2019s observations. But there was another factor to consider.<\/p>\n

A Land of Ice<\/p>\n

P\u00e1ll Einarsson<\/a> vividly recalls the day in 1963 when Surtsey began erupting. His father, a volcano-curious engineer, drove him to the airport, where the elder Einarsson had convinced an airline pilot to take an impromptu flight over the new volcano. From the plane, the younger Einarsson watched the plume of dark smoke emerge from the endless northern seas.<\/p>\n

Einarsson went on to study volcanoes, among other things, and is now an emeritus geophysicist at the University of Iceland. When asked about Expedition M201\u2019s findings, he said he was impressed by the team\u2019s efforts but not fully convinced of their theory about how the flat-topped volcanoes formed. That\u2019s because, for different reasons, similar volcanoes appear both in the deep ocean and on land.<\/p>\n

Some 20,000 years ago, Iceland was covered with slow-moving glaciers. Today, glaciers remain across approximately 11% of the country, and the areas left behind are home to squat mountains called tuyas, or table mountains. Some scientists think the tuyas formed when rising magma collided with a thick ceiling of ice and melted it, triggering explosions. But like a paving stone above a cluster of mushrooms, the glaciers acted like a lid, preventing the volcanoes from growing too tall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The deposits that blanketed the volcanoes\u2019 steep flanks were critical clues, Preine said. Water dampens how far debris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-696347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}