A series of earthquakes shook the flanks of Etna volcano during the past days. Since the afternoon of 31 Dec 2020 until this morning, a swarm of tremors has occurred at depths of 10-15 km mainly under the southern flank of the volcano.
A total of almost 40 quakes of magnitudes of up to 3.8 have been recorded, most of them on 31 Dec and early 1 Jan. The strongest quakes were widely felt by people living on the southern slopes of Etna.
There are no signs that that these quakes have affected the activity at the summit craters, which has been calming down gradually, and seems to consist only of sporadic (if any) weak strombolian activity and some ash emissions from the New SE crater and, to lesser extent, the Voragine central crater.
It is unclear whether the earthquakes were volcanic in origin, but they might well be so, possibly caused by deep magmatic intrusions that pressurize deep reservoirs and break up rocks in the mantle to create space, resulting in small earthquakes. Ultimately, they might but not necessarily need to be precursors of a new phase of activity, something that only Etna knows at the present.
