Gravity is pulling Italy's Mount Etna into the Mediterranean Sea, and that could one day cause the volcano's southeastern flank to collapse, a new study finds.
Scientists have long known that Etna is creeping toward the sea. Between 2001 and 2012, it moved about a half-inch a year, according to Live Science. The question was whether magma inside the volcano was causing the movement.
The new study used underwater sensors to show, however, that gravity is the main culprit causing the volcano's southeastern flank to move, National Geographic reports. The southeastern flank juts into the Ionian Sea, which is a long bay on the Mediterranean.
Morelia Urlaub, a researcher at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, and leader of the research team, said, "Mount Etna is a really big volcano, more than 3,300 meters (nearly 11,000 feet), and the lava is making it grow bigger all the time. So its own weight is causing the flanks to spread outward into all directions and this is what we mean with gravitational instability."
That instability could lead to the mountainside collapsing.
"The results of this study suggest Etna’s flank movement, in fact, poses a greater hazard than previously thought," Urlaub said.
Boris Behncke, a volcanologist at the Etna Observatory at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, told National Geographic, “A massive collapse would be a disaster for a vast and densely populated area.”
Urlaub said there are no signs indicating a collapse on Etna is imminent, but volcanoes can collapse catastrophically — as has happened around Hawaii and the Canary Islands.
"So Etna's sliding flank could maybe lead to collapse, but if that happens on human timescales? We don't know," she said. "But it is important to be aware of this potential danger so that we can keep an eye on the flank movements."
https://weather.com/news/news/2018-10-15-mount-etna-volcano-collapse-sea-tsunami
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