Eruptions with short run-up times: review of controlling factors inspired by the unexpected eruption of Calbuco volcano, April 2015, (Southern Andes)

Abstract:

Signs of unrest are usually detected in active volcanoes before the onset of eruptions. However, a few eruptions start suddenly without evident precursory activity or very short run-up time. The latter poses a challenge to volcano observatories regarding the capability to issue early warnings. Calbuco (42°S, Southern Andes) explosive event in April 2015 is a recent case where clear signs of unrest were detected shortly before the eruption of an andesitic magma (57% SiO2). In fact, although isolated low magnitude VT events were recorded 2 months before, the base level was only disturbed 3 hours before by an emergent seismic swarm of M<2.5 VT events, followed by 30 minutes of escalating LP and HB events. Calbuco erupted after 54 years of quiescence and no ground deformation was detected by InSAR or ground-based methods before the eruption. This short precursory activity is comparable to run-up times observed in basaltic to andesitic volcanoes. Previous authors have proposed a relationship between repose and run-up times. Repose time seems to be related with dynamics of plumbing systems (recharge and storage) and thus depends on the magma viscosity and hence magma composition. Others have shown that correlation between repose and run-up times is dependent of volcano typology. Here we expand the catalog and consider other factors as the crustal thickness, physical properties of the country rocks, depth of magma chambers and tectonic regime for all the reported eruptions with existing information. Our findings show that eruptions preceded by an extremely short unrest period occur mostly under conditions of favorable (tectonically-controlled) magma pathways unclamping, even in high-silica systems with large repose times.