Chronology of the seismic and ground deformation precursors of the 2014 Fogo Volcano - Cape Verde Islands - eruption.

Abstract:

The most recent eruption of Fogo Volcano, Cape Verde Islands started on the 23 November 2014 at 10h15 (CVT), after 19 years of quiescence. Several months before the begging of the eruption, the seismic activity started to deviate from the baseline, with the appearance of a class of events that was not recorded before then. This activity was characterized by a significant number of instrumentally detected, very low magnitude seismic events, sometimes more than 100 per day. In September those events became more energetic and analysis indicated that they could be of volcano-tectonic (VT) origin. The first VT event to be located was on 4 October with a 2.5 local magnitude: it was located slightly to the south of the middle of the island at between 15.5 and 16 km depth. This was deeper than normal for background VT events and coincided with the depth of last magma equilibration in the 1995 eruption. It was therefore interpreted as a possible precursor of an eruption: thus the alert level was raised to level 2, and the civil protection authorities were informed. On the following weeks the rate of VT events slightly increased and the focal depths became shallower. Very sporadic harmonic volcano tremor episodes and very few and weak long-period events were also recorded. From about the 15 to 21 November, the VT activity rate oscillated, and hypocentres tended to gather in the vicinity of an inferred dike emplacement and at shallower depth - 6 to 5 km b.s.l. On the first hours of the 22 November seismic rate increased from 3 to 6 events per hour and the events became more energetic. After 19h30 (CVT), when the magma reached the ductile-brittle transition zone (5 to 4 km b.s.l), the seismic rate increased again to more than one event per minute; earthquake magnitudes increased as well. At about 03h00 (CVT) the tilt records shown a prominent ground deformation. Continuous volcanic tremor started only one to half an hour before the start of the eruption.