Mount Erebus activity

Abstract

An international team of scientists reports that unusually high seismic activity joggled Mount Erebus last fall. However, the Antarctic volcano showed no external signs of an eruption.When scientists from the United States, Japan, and New Zealand returned to the world's southernmost active volcano last November for their annual field expedition, they found that seismic stations recorded 650 small tremors on October 8; prior to that, the number of quakes had averaged between 20 and 80 per day. The October 8 maximum was followed by 140 on October 9 and 120 on October 10. Philip R. Kyle, assistant professor of geochemistry at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and leader of the team studying Mount Erebus, noted that some of the strongest earthquakes recorded during the team's 3 years of observations occurred on October 8; these registered less than 2 on the Richter scale.