Are Stromboli and Etna connected?What the volcanologist says

Invg expert De Astis answers the fateful question.And he points out how the shows underway between the two active Sicilian volcanoes may seem like a challenge to those who "shoot the hardest"

ROME – It seems like a competition, or rather un duel of titans the one underway among the Sicilian volcanoes in this hot and 'fiery' July.THE'Etna on the one hand and it Stromboli on the other, 'just' 179 kilometers away, they are putting on a show, with close eruptions.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO DATE

On the "big island" the fire activity was recorded between 4 and 5 July and then again on the 7th, with an eruptive column up to around 9000 meters high.On the smaller island, however, V-day was - before today - definitely the July 4th last, because on that date, Stromboli ceased its "ordinary activity" and a "purely effusive" phase began.This is also why the Civil Protection raised the alert on the island from orange and red levels to 8pm that day.

Today, July 11th, a new "episode" of the duel took place.In fact “Stromboli he shot as far as he could, causing its eruptive column to reach at least 5 km in height and sending part of its cloud along the Sciara del Fuoco for a new, imposing pyroclastic flow", reports Gianfilippo De Astis, volcanologist of the Invg that in an article on the institute's website describes this 'battle' between volcanoes step by step, challenge after challenge.

IS THERE AN UNDERGROUND CONNECTION BETWEEN ETNA AND STROMBOLI?

But not only that, De Astis also tries to answer, as an expert, the question of questions that many are asking themselves seeing the simultaneous activism of Etna and Stromboli:that is to say, these volcanoes, with their eruptions, are somehow connected at an underground level and therefore, perhaps, predictable? The answer risks displeasing everyone a little because it is "No, Stromboli and Etna are not directly connected", writes De Astis.The first “is considered a volcano fed by magmatic melts linked to the subduction.Etna is instead considered a intraplate volcano.Therefore, although geographically quite close, they are two volcanoes that belong to two different geodynamic contexts and which only in the most advanced geophysical and petrological models appear to share some weak chemical affinities with regard to the "primitive" magmas that they sometimes emit".

THE AFFINITIES OF THE CLOAK

Now the explanation is decidedly technical, but the answer is clearly negative for all aspiring volcanologists.De Astis continues by describing elements, yes, of affinity between the two "lava cones":for the expert "it is their different sources in the earth's mantle that have some affinities".Ergo, the mantle is one, the deepest, of the concentric shells that make up the earth, between the crust and the earth's core.Returning to our two Sicilian titans however, cloak affinity aside, “I am volcanoes with their own autonomous power system already starting from 10-20 km of depth".

“BOTH ACTIVE FOR THOUSANDS NOT JUST IN THE LAST 50 YEARS”

For the rest, another affinity is that they are both “open vent volcanoes, with almost continuous activities if reported on the long (very long!) scale of geological time", he explains.And the fact that "we remember them as active in the same period of time, such as the last 40-50 years (at most a couple of human generations), therefore misleads us, making us think of an non-existent underground connection“.Because in reality this is not considered to be the case "these volcanoes have been active (together) for at least three millennia - recalls De Astis - and it is well known that many eruptions of one do not correspond to eruptions of the other".

And so “it is only our nature as imaginative humans that leads us to say:“…then these two shoot together!”, concludes the expert.And so it happened.

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