NEW YORK, May 20 (Xinhua) -- A mysterious and highly active undersea volcano off the Pacific Coast could erupt by the end of this year -- nearly a mile deep and about 700 miles northwest of San Francisco, California, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.
The volcano known as Axial Seamount is drawing increasing scrutiny from scientists who only discovered its existence in the 1980s.
Located in a darkened part of the northeast Pacific Ocean, the submarine volcano has erupted three times since its discovery -- in 1998, 2011 and 2015 -- according to Bill Chadwick, a research associate at Oregon State University and an expert on the volcano.
"Fortunately for residents of California, Oregon and Washington, Axial Seamount doesn't erupt explosively, so it poses zero risk of any tsunami," noted the report.
"Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Hood, Crater Lake -- those kinds of volcanoes have a lot more gas and are more explosive in general. The magma is more viscous," Chadwick said. "Axial is more like the volcanoes in Hawaii and Iceland ... less gas, the lava is very fluid, so the gas can get out without exploding."
Axial Seamount, by contrast, is a volcano that, during eruptions, oozes lava -- similar to the type of eruptions in Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii. As a result, Axial's eruptions are not noticeable to people on land, added the report.
