A Tenerife travel warning has been issued with a volcano sparking a risk to travel – as a “seismic swarm” hits the Canary Islands. Tenerife, one of the main Canary Islands and neighboured by the likes of Lanzarote, is visited by thousands of UK tourists and holidaymakers each and every year.
Tenerife has not seen major volcanic activity since 1909, as fears grow of a possible eruption. The Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands (Involcan) said it had detected dozens of small earthquakes with 26 in the southwest sector of the Las Cañadas del Teide crater, the island’s largest volcano.
Scientists are reporting a “seismic swarm” as a result. This increase in seismicity is believed to be due to a pressurisation process within the volcanic-hydrothermal system, likely linked to the injection of magmatic gases into the system.
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Involcan emphasised that this seismic activity does not pose any danger to the population and does not indicate a change in the probability of a volcanic eruption occurring in Tenerife in the short to medium term.
The activity was recorded between 1:42am and 6:08am on Tuesday, according to the volcanological institute’s report released yesterday. The earthquakes were registered at depths ranging from 5 to 10 kilometres, but the biggest recorded magnitude of these tremors was only 1.2 on the Richter scale.
The last major eruption in Tenerife was at the beginning of last century. The Chinyero eruption took place on November 18, 1909 and lasted for ten days. There is one major volcano on Tenerife, known as Mount Teide. It is a relatively unique stratovolcano, as it is located on top of a shield volcano.
It has one of the tallest peaks on Earth, only slightly smaller than Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. The islands with the most volcanoes are Gran Canaria, Tenerife and La Palma.