Scientists have uncovered the cause of the strongest series of earthquakes in Antarctica. Article about it published Communication World and Environment.
A series of 85,000 earthquakes began around the dormant underwater volcano Orka in August 2020 and subsided by November of the same year. It was the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the region. Orca is located in Bransfield Strait and rises 900 m above the seafloor. In this region, in ancient times the Phoenix tectonic plate sank under the Antarctic plate, forming a fault network.
Simona Ceska of the Helmholtz Center in Potsdam and her colleagues decided to find out what caused a series of earthquakes. To do this, they used data from two seismic stations in the area. They supplemented them with information about the displacement of the soil in this area, obtained using ground stations with GPS trackers and satellites taking a radar image of the Earth.
By combining all this data, Cheska was able to create a complete picture of the geological events that led to earthquakes. Among other things, it turned out that King George Island moved about 11 cm. Scientists believe that such a shift and earthquakes were caused by a magmatic attack – a magma flow that penetrated the earth’s crust in the Orca region. However, it is unclear whether this volcanic activity led to the eruption. To test this, the authors hope to send a mission to explore the bottom of the mountain.
Source: Gazeta
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