Rising Up
Greek volcano reawakens
Santorini volcano is slowly inflating, a possible precursor to an eruption.
The Greek islands of Santorini, site of one of history's most colossal volcanic eruptions, are rumbling again. Since January 2011, earthquakes have shaken the landscape and the Santorini volcano's surface has lifted by about 140 millimeters possibly because magma is rising from the deep and filling an underground chamber, scientists report in an upcoming Geophysical Research Letters. It's far from certain whether Santorini will erupt, the researchers say. Even if it does, the eruption won't be anything like the infamous blast that occurred around 1600 B.C., says Andrew Newman, a geophysicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. That eruption showered ash across the eastern Mediterranean, possibly contributing to the decline of the Minoan civilization and perhaps giving rise to the legend of the lost city of Atlantis. "We do not think a Minoan-type eruption is likely," Newman says. If Santorini does erupt, it will probably be a small eruption like those seen there over the past few hundred years, most recently in 1950. Those eruptions have built up a pair of islands in the center of the now-drowned remains of the volcano, or caldera.
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