{"id":390293,"date":"2026-04-21T10:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T10:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/390293\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T10:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T10:57:08","slug":"volcanoes-send-tiny-warning-signals-before-eruptions-these-scientists-are-decoding-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/390293\/","title":{"rendered":"Volcanoes Send Tiny Warning Signals Before Eruptions. These Scientists Are Decoding Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Science is a constant work in progress; despite breakthroughs, humanity still struggles to fully explain many natural phenomena. That includes predicting volcanic eruptions. While extensive monitoring networks do give researchers some precursors to eruptions, these systems remain imperfect<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But a new monitoring system named \u201cJerk\u201d might offer a reliable, simple solution to this issue. Described in a December 2025 Nature Communications<\/a> study, Jerk is a single broadband seismometer<\/a> capable of automatically identifying very early signals of volcanic eruptions in real time\u2014and it\u2019s fully automated.<\/p>\n

Typically, announcements on innovative technologies come before the thing has been out in the real world, with the conclusion being something to the effect of, \u201cWe think it should work the way we\u2019re saying it will!\u201d And even if the tool does get tested, it\u2019s rare that experiments go on for years, especially if that tool is meant to survey extreme environments like a volcano.<\/p>\n

\"PitonAn eruption at the Piton de la Fournaise in January 2026. \u00a9 Fran\u00e7ois Beauducel <\/p>\n

Well, somehow Jerk is none of these things. The team behind Jerk installed its tool at the Piton de la Fournaise<\/a> on La R\u00e9union Island, France, in 2014, where it still sits today. The latest paper covers a 10-year survey period, during which Jerk successfully predicted 92% of the volcano\u2019s eruptions, sending alerts between minutes and eight hours in advance.<\/p>\n

That couldn\u2019t have been an easy feat. So Gizmodo reached out to Fran\u00e7ois Beauducel <\/a>and Philippe Jousset<\/a>, geophysicists who conceptualized, executed, and tested Jerk for over a decade. In this Q&A, Beauducel and Jousset, of the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France and the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany, respectively, reflect on the various challenges and insights during their unique decade-long journey\u2014and where things might go from here.<\/p>\n

The following conversation has been edited lightly for grammar and clarity.<\/p>\n

Gayoung Lee, Gizmodo: Generally speaking, why has it been so difficult for us to predict volcanic eruptions or earthquakes?<\/p>\n

Fran\u00e7ois Beauducel: We have many observations of the atmospheric conditions. So we can put all this data into a very complex model and make not perfect, but efficient, predictions in the short term. We don\u2019t have the observation inside the volcano. That\u2019s the main reason. If we were able to measure everything\u2014all the mechanical characteristics, the physical characteristics of the rocks, the magma chamber, and the shape of the pipe from the fissure to the surface\u2014we should probably be able to make nice predictions.<\/p>\n

Philippe Jousset: Also, it\u2019s not one measurement technique that will allow us to understand what\u2019s happening. It\u2019s not that there\u2019s an opening and then magma (imagined as a fluid) goes out. It\u2019s more complex because the magma is full of crystals, gas, liquid, and water, whose behavior depends on the composition of the relative materials.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo: Okay, so what is Jerk? How does the tool alleviate these challenges?<\/p>\n

Beauducel: Presently, volcano stations require [manual operations] by humans to integrate, synthesize, and analyze all the observations, and then you are able to say, \u201cProbably, we think an eruption will be coming.\u201d So this is very specialized work made possible by volcanologists based on geophysics and geochemistry.<\/p>\n

The Jerk system is innovative in that it\u2019s fully automatic. It can be implemented using only one station, at a relatively long distance. At the Piton de la Fournaise, Jerk was installed around 8 kilometers [5 miles] from the volcano. The system detects the early fracturing of the rock during the migration of the magma to the surface.<\/p>\n

On most volcanoes, the definition of an eruption is magma coming to the surface. And to come to the surface, the magma needs to crack the rock or make a new fissure\u2014and the opening produces a \u201cjerk.\u201d The word used in the paper is magmatic intrusion.<\/p>\n

Jousset: If there\u2019s an intrusion, magma may reach the surface, which makes it, by definition, an eruption. But sometimes it gets stuck, because the jerk is not large enough.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo: So the intrusion \u201cjerks\u201d the magma to the surface.<\/p>\n

Beauducel: Yeah. The word \u201cjerk\u201d here refers to several things, but the first definition is mathematical; it\u2019s a derivative of ground acceleration, as well as the brutal, horizontal movement of the surface.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo: And you tested this system at Piton de la Fournaise for ten years. That\u2019s a long time. How were you even able to go through with this and also make sure that everything remained consistent throughout the decade?<\/p>\n

Beauducel: That\u2019s a very interesting question. First of all, the team at Piton de la Fournaise is very small, like 15 people. But the observatory was installed about 50 years ago, so that\u2019s almost 50 years of recorded data. I made software specially made to experiment with new signal processing and modeling of real-time data on volcanoes. So we went to the observatory in April of 2014, and it took only 10 days of fieldwork to make the system operational.<\/p>\n

\"OvpfResearchers at the eruption crisis management center near Piton de la Fournaise. \u00a9 OVPF-IPGP <\/p>\n

As for why it took 10 years to validate, the first reason was that we didn\u2019t know what the \u201cjerk\u201d was. It wasn\u2019t that we made a new theory and tried to apply it. We had the signal and then implemented it as an alert system. At the end, we had 24 eruptions to validate [with the system]. So that\u2019s really the story; we took our time and discussed it a lot. We knew we were the only people looking at this kind of signal, so we weren\u2019t in a rush. And actually, in 2023, the Piton de la Fournaise stopped erupting. This happens every 10 or 15 years for this volcano.<\/p>\n

Jousset: Yeah, it was as if the volcano was happy to let us work, and once we wrapped up [our analysis], it was done.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo: Philippe, do you remember how your contribution to this project began?<\/p>\n

Jousset: I remember exactly where and when we discussed this. That was in Indonesia. At the time Jerk had been implemented for around 5 years, and Piton de la Fournaise had an eruption when we were in Indonesia, and Francois told me, \u201cOh look, a \u2018jerk.\u2019 There will be an eruption.\u201d And I didn\u2019t believe it. I told him, \u201cYes, it\u2019s working, but what is it?\u201d Francois said this sign was the channels of the seismometer recording the mass position and the velocity [of ground motion].<\/p>\n

\"BeauducelAccording to Beauducel, this photograph shows \u201cPhilippe and me discussing jerk signals in Indonesia. This isn\u2019t staged\u2014it\u2019s real!\u201d \u00a9 Y. Beauducel <\/p>\n

One of the projects I worked on while in France was at a location where a sudden collapse of material in a mine produced important \u201ctilts\u201d in broadband seismometers installed close to this site. And I saw that in this mass position on the volcano, there is something to discover with this signal.<\/p>\n

Gizmodo: So Jerk is quite good at predicting eruptions, at least for Piton de la Fournaise. What\u2019s up for your team next?<\/p>\n

Beauducel: At Piton La Fournaise, the next challenge is to improve the Jerk system. Sometimes we have false positives from station maintenance or someone walking close. Eventually we want to have it fully automatic and distinguish false positives from normal alarms.<\/p>\n

Jousset: We\u2019d also like to measure these signals at other volcanoes, to see whether there are such signals elsewhere. Mount Etna<\/a>, [where we\u2019ll be deploying this next], is the best place to do this because it\u2019s an active volcano; there are many eruptions with very small fractures that can\u2019t be seen with conventional instruments [that Jerk might be able to see].<\/p>\n

The challenge is that we\u2019ll be deploying at or close to the surface. We\u2019re going to dig holes as deep as possible to insulate the system from other noise sources. With multiple stations, we hope to locate where these tiny signals are happening and whether they\u2019re different compared to Piton de la Fournaise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Science is a constant work in progress; despite breakthroughs, humanity still struggles to fully explain many natural phenomena.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[26576,111,139,69,147,26577,14854],"class_list":{"0":"post-390293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-geology","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-seismology","14":"tag-volcanoes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}