Can climate change cause more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?
Does sea level rise increase the frequency of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? Or does the melting of glaciers due to temperature rise lead to more volcanic eruptions?
Scientists have long offered this hypothesis, and now they have a chance to test this theory.
“Recent studies have proposed a causal link between rising sea-level during periods of warming climate, and increased frequency of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes,” said Dr Lorna Strachan, a senior lecturer in sedimentology at the University of Auckland (Morton, 2020).
To test the hypotheses, a team of scientists from New Zealand, the UK, the USA, Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, and Australia began multi-year research on the 500-metre long sediment core retrieved from the Hikurangi Subduction Zone, New Zealand’s largest and most active fault.
The East coast lab article “Does climate change influence the frequency of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?” explains that the sediment core contains a record of all the sediment and material that has been deposited on the seafloor over the last 800,000 years (Does climate change, 2022).
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