Discovery of 19,000 Underwater Volcanoes Using High-Resolution Radar Satellites: A Breakthrough in Seamount Mapping

SAN DIEGO – Discovery array of 19,000 volcano under the sea astonishes and confuses scientists. The composition of thousands of volcanoes was detected using satellite high resolution radar.

This discovery gave scientists the most complete seamount catalog ever made. The new summary, published April 6 in the journal Earth and Space Science, could provide a better understanding of ocean currents, plate tectonics and climate change.

Previously, only a quarter of Earth’s ocean floor had been mapped using sonar, which uses sound waves to detect objects hidden underwater. A 2011 sonar census found more than 24,000 seamounts, or seamounts formed by volcanic activity.

However, according to the Science article, there are more than 27,000 seamounts that have not been charted by sonar. “It’s really confusing,” said David Sandwell, marine geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to Science magazine Saturday (29/4/2023).

This new summary map, published April 6 in the journal Earth and Space Science, can provide a better understanding of ocean currents, plate tectonics and climate change. This new study shows that scientists don’t need to rely on sonar surveys to investigate what’s going on beneath the ocean.

Radar satellites not only measure the height of the ocean but can also see what is lurking in the depths of the water, offering a better representation of the topography of the seafloor. The scientists pulled data from several satellites, including the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2, and detected a 1,100-meter-high underwater hump that is the lower boundary of a seamount.

With this technology, scientists estimate they can estimate the height of a small underwater volcano to an accuracy of about 1,214 feet or 370 meters. So far, researchers have mapped a collection of seamounts in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean that may help explain the evolution of the mantle plume that fed Iceland’s more than 100 volcanoes.

The updated map will also provide a better understanding of ocean currents and “upwelling”, which occurs when water from the ocean floor churns upward to the surface. This is a phenomenon that scientists think can be concentrated in mountains and seamounts.

“There are a lot of interesting things that happen when you have topography,” says Brian Arbic, a physical oceanographer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

(wib)