Volcanologists have confirmed that volcanoes can share magma pathways across tens of kilometers, coupling their eruption cycles in ways that could reshape forecasting.
Key Takeaways
The 1912 Katmai/Novarupta eruption was the first evidence of coupling: magma traveled 10km laterally underground before erupting from a vent nobody knew existed.
In 2014, Iceland’s Bárðarbunga/Askja pair gave the first real-time capture of magma migrating 45km between coupled volcanoes.
Zach Ross (Caltech) trained ML on a decade of California seismic data and found 10x more tremors than human surveys; applying it to Hawaii revealed the Pāhala sill complex – a shared reservoir with separate arteries feeding Kīlauea and Mauna Loa.
Coupled pairs can either alternate eruptions (one drains the shared source) or co-erupt when the shared reservoir overfills both.
The German-Greek Multi-Marex seafloor sensor array around Santorini and Kolumbo captured a major January 2025 earthquake swarm almost immediately after deployment.
