US scientists predict eruption of undersea volcano

US scientists predict eruption of undersea volcano - U.S. scientists said on Tuesday they have successfully predicted the outbreak for the first time one of the world's most active submarine volcanoes off the coast of western Oregon.

Scientists from Oregon and New York have been monitoring the Axial Seamount, 250 miles (400 kilometers) into the sea as it broke last in 1998, and predicted it would return before the year 2014.

On an expedition to the area on 29 July, the researchers discovered remarkably with a remote-controlled robot is a lava flow that was not there the year before, and started that whole area looked unfamiliar.

"When we arrived on the ocean floor, we thought we were in the wrong place, because it's so look like everyone else," said Bill Chadwick, an Oregon State University geologist, a 2006 study that another eruption in 2014, predicts Co author.

"We could not find our markers or monitoring instruments or other distinctive features on the bottom."

The team was down with pressure sensors, the same tools to monitor the ocean floor for possible tsunami after an earthquake. A few of their recording instruments soon resurfaced, and the scientists found that the eruption on 6 April happens.

The team was excited at the discovery, but noted that most volcanoes remain very volatile.

"Forecasting the eruption of volcanoes, most land is generally very difficult at best, and the behavior is the most complex and variable," Scott Nooner, said geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

"We now have evidence that Axial Seamount behaves in a predictable way as many other volcanoes."

The researchers observed the level of the volcanic crater or caldera, rising after its last eruption at a rate of about 15 centimeters (six inches) per year, as it is inflated with accumulating magma, and predicted it would erupt again if the level of reaches 1998th

"The litmus test in science - if you understand a process in nature - is to try to predict what will happen based on your observations," said Chadwick.

"We can now build on this knowledge and look to apply it to other undersea volcanoes - and perhaps even volcanoes on land."