A new magma chamber in the submarine volcano Kolumbo, located 8 km NE of Santorini Island in the Aegean Sea, has been discovered by scientists. It is even thought to be capable of erupting, although not in the immediate future.
It was announced in a recent paper published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems by a team of scientists led by Kajetan Chrapkiewicz from the Department of Earth Sciences at Imperial College London. The chamber was identified at a depth of 2-4 km below the seafloor thanks to research for the first time with seismic waves and new-generation tomographic methods. The shape of the chamber resembles a mushroom, thinner at the base and wider at the top.
Scientists believe that the chamber may be key to understanding the intense seismic activity of 2006-07 and 2011-12 in this region of the Greek volcanic arc. The earthquakes appear to be related to increasing amounts of magma rising from greater depths toward the chamber.
