Can glaciers contribute to volcano monitoring and eruption forecasting?

Volcanic eruptions can destroy infrastructure, affect businesses and economies, and claim lives, thus having disastrous consequences for people, communities and countries. Some 19% of all active volcanoes host glaciers, and the eruptions of ice-clad volcanoes are amongst the most disruptive (e.g., Eyjafjallajökull) and deadliest (e.g., Nevado del Ruiz) of the past century. It is now becoming increasingly clear that effective volcano monitoring and eruption forecasting, including for ice-clad volcanoes, requires a multi-disciplinary approach. This raises the following question: can glaciers, whose dynamic behavior might reflect volcanic activity, become an additional, much needed, parameter to consider and monitor?

 

To answer this question, we present global scale analyses of glacier velocity and glacier elevation that demonstrate how these two parameters are affected by proximity to active volcanoes. Specifically, glaciers closer to volcanoes possess higher velocities and are restricted to higher elevations. This is likely due to increased basal melting in response to higher geothermal heat flux experienced on and near volcanoes. In particular, we propose that the enhanced melting negatively affects the glacier mass balance, confining them to higher elevations. It also lubricates the glacier bed thus making them move faster, relative to glaciers that are further from volcanoes. As volcanoes often “heat up” prior to an eruption, sometimes for years in advance, we anticipate that glacier elevation (in the longer term – e.g., years) and velocity (in the shorter term – e.g., months) might also change, thus providing two valuable new parameters to consider in volcano monitoring and eruption forecasting efforts.