No, the statue isn’t actually down there, but this week started out with such a nerve-wracking swarm of intense earthquakes under the town of Pozzuoli and the nearby Solfatara fumarole field that local residents might not have given Lady Liberty a second glance, had she come striding out of Pozzuoli Bay!
We have looked at this very famous Naples-area volcano before, with more or less live blogging since Campi Flegrei became restive last summer.
To sum up the recent swarm, on May 20 a magnitude 4.4 temblor — the strongest in four decades of monitoring — occurred under Solfatara. There was also a 3-pointer, but the rest of the swarm’s 100-plus earthquakes were much smaller, mostly magnitude 1 or less.
INGV declared the swarm over on the 21st, but there were a few small rattlers after that and ultimately a M3.6 on May 22 in the west central part of Pozzuoli Bay, which is the submerged part of Campi Flegrei caldera, as the following INGV video shows:
It’s in Italian. I ran it through a translator and discovered that the narration simply describes the visuals — we all can follow it easily! Solfatara is shown near the start.
A network of anchored GPS buoys
This 2018 Eos article gives you the gist of what’s going on with those anchored buoys.
That is the MEDUSA (Multiparametric Elastic-beacon Devices and Underwater Sensors Acquisition) network — the latest in a series of projects that have enabled scientists to monitor the underwater part of this hazardous volcano since 2008.
Here is INGV’s MEDUSA page (English and Italian).
If you are curious and don’t mind a little jargon, here is the 2017 article mentioned by Eos, as well as an update in 2020.
This review paper (jargon alert) provides in-depth background on a very restless caldera.
Why is this newsworthy?
On May 21, the director of INGV was interviewed (autotranslated, but to watch the video you will need to visit the Italian-language original).
She told journalists that the MEDUSA system will be expanded to cover an area in the west central bay that is showing some fumarolic activity.
INGV (Italian).
This ongoing period of unrest at Campi Flegrei caldera is not yet over, and I wanted to use this Sunday Morning Volcano post to provide a little background on how geoscientists are monitoring it.
Ready for some interpretive dance to express how it feels to live in the volcano?
I recommend this whole channel, although I don’t understand Italian ❤
Flight To Wonder 