The bowels of Santiago del Teide have trembled during the early morning, giving rise to a small seismic series of at least twenty earthquakes. This is the second time in just a month that the west coast of Tenerife, an unusual place for earthquakes, has been shaken. As occurred in the event of June 12, the earthquakes that have been located are at great depths of between 40 and 50 kilometers. However, this time they have been detected in the interior of the island, instead of in the sea.
This small seismic series has been recorded by the seismic stations National Geographic Institute (IGN) between 1:00 and 11:47 in the morning this July 5th. The earthquakes are, unlike the July earthquakes, further inland on the island of Tenerife.
The earthquakes follow the same pattern as those of a month ago. They have been small, weak – their maximum magnitude has been 2.9 mbLg (magnitude scale used by the IGN) -, and they have been found at a very high depth. Some characteristics that have earned it not to be felt by the local population.
The IGN continues to analyze this series and will expand the information if necessary.. In early June, earthquakes were also recorded in that area, although at that time the activity was further out to sea. At least 40 earthquakes shook, also at dawn, the west coast of Tenerife, specifically the area coinciding with the Teno-Rasca marine strip. The IGN was able to locate 15 of them. After maintaining a continuous activity during the night, the earthquakes stopped. A trend that has also been reflected in the swarm that occurred today.
The phenomenon has caught the attention of IGN, which continues to monitor this region of the Islands in case new events occur. However, as in June, the IGN has confirmed that this seismic series does not mean “any change in the state of volcanic activity on the island due to the low number of events and its small size.”
It is, however, a “strange” zone within the seismic catalogue. And it is that the seismicity in Tenerife is usually limited to three specific areas: Las Cañadas del Teide, Arico and the area that separates Tenerife from Gran Canaria, which is also usually related to the Enmedio Volcano. It is the second time since 2017 that the records capture an activity on the west coast of Tenerife.
“Last year there was a scattered earthquake, perhaps two and at most three,” explains the IGN seismologist, Itahiza Domínguez, who could not confirm how they occurred. Being located between 40 and 50 kilometers deep, they are very far from the earth’s crust. “In the Canary Islands, the crust is about 15 or 20 kilometers away, and they are so far from that limit that it is very difficult to know their origin,” he says. In fact, today it is difficult to know even if it has something to do with the rest of the seismicity of the island.
“A priori it does not seem so and there is nothing to indicate it, but the Canary Islands in general and Tenerife in particular, has such a complex volcanic system that we cannot be sure either”, Dominguez insists. As he remembers, the seismicity that occurs in the interior of the island of Tenerife, which is related to the natural and volcanic process of the island, occurs in that oceanic crust.
“What we see now does not seem to have anything to do with it because its characteristics do not match,” he stresses. The IGN researchers will keep monitoring the phenomenon in case it is maintained “continuously” and to corroborate its relationship or not with the volcanism of the Islands.
