A seemingly stagnant Taranaki Maunga/Mount Taranaki could break its 200-year silence with little warning, according to research led by the University of Auckland (UoA).
Reconstructions of volcanic events over roughly the past 1,000 years showed "as little as a day to a week of seismic activity" before magma breached the surface in an eruption.
"That’s a very brief period of warning," said Associate Professor Phil Shane of UoA's School of Environment.
He said the "unusual" quiet period will likely come to an end "as has happened at other volcanoes around the world, sometimes surprising local populations".
"Ash from past eruptions has been spread across New Zealand, suggesting that future eruptions could be nationwide hazards ... for that reason, we need to have a sense of how much warning we will get and unfortunately it seems like it may not be much."
UoA's research, in collaboration with the University of Otago and Université de Paris Cité, relied on microscopic crystals in erupted rock as clues.
The crystals contained patterns that, similar to tree-rings, were formed in response to changes in temperature, pressure and magma composition.
The research, funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and published in the Bulletin of Volcanology, said the crystals glow differently depending on how quickly magma rises to the surface, or if it stalls in the earth's crust.
"Modelling allows calculations of the time from a crystal’s formation to an eruption, indicating how long magma took to surface," a UoA news release said.
A website dedicated to the research said Taranaki has a 50% probability of erupting over the next 50 years, "yet the dormancy since Taranaki’s last eruption (~AD1790) is one of its longest".
"Thus, we have no modern experience of its typically very long eruptions.
"Past research shows that once Mt. Taranaki starts erupting, it continues for years, decades, or centuries."
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