Carbon dioxide from the mantle may cause some Italian earthquakes

Italy may owe some of its seismic activity to deep-Earth carbon dioxide.

The Apennine Mountains region in the center of the country has been hit by several devastating earthquakes in recent years, including the massive 6.3 magnitude earthquake that devastated the city of L’Aquila in 2009 (SN: 8/14/09). A decade-long record of natural carbon dioxide emissions in the region reveals that spikes in carbon dioxide release coincided with the largest earthquakes. This finding indicates that the rise of carbon dioxide toward the Earth’s surface could alter the pressure along faults to cause earthquakes, researchers reported online Aug.26 in Science Advances. Understanding the relationship between carbon dioxide and earthquakes could someday improve earthquake predictions.

Earth naturally releases carbon dioxide when tectonic forces dissolve carbonate rocks in the mantle, a process that releases carbon dioxide (SN: 10/1/19). Carbon dioxide rises and collects in compressed pockets in the earth’s crust and seeps into the groundwater that feeds springs above the ground. Previous studies indicated that carbon dioxide tends to escape from Earth in seismic hot spots. But without long-term records of carbon dioxide emissions in earthquake-prone areas, no one knows exactly what the timing of carbon emissions is compared to the occurrence of earthquakes.

From 2009 to 2018, researchers measured carbon content in spring water fed by the Velino Aquifer, which is located near the epicenter of L’Aquila in 2009 and sits above a reservoir of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s crust. This data shows that the jumps in carbon dioxide emissions occurred around the same time as the strong earthquakes, and emissions decreased when the earthquakes were smaller and farther in between. When the region is struck by earthquakes of magnitude 6 or higher, the Philino aquifers release more than 600 metric tons of carbon dioxide per day. During seismic calm periods, the springs emit between 400 and 500 tons of carbon dioxide per day.

Carbon dioxide from deep in the mantle can rise through the crust, seep into the groundwater and reach the surface of spring water, as in the case of the San Vittorino spring (shown) in central Italy. Chiudini / INGV

However, these data do not conclusively show whether rising carbon dioxide helps induce earthquakes, or if the shaky ground is simply bringing more carbon dioxide to the surface, says Andrea Bailey, a geoscientist at the Italian National Research Council at Rome not participate in the action. “It’s a chicken-and-egg problem.” Continuous monitoring of these types of carbon dioxide emissions in the Apennines and other seismically active regions, such as California and Japan, could reveal whether the rising gas is a precursor or a product of earthquakes, he says.

“I think there are reactions between the two,” says study co-author Giovanni Chiudini, a geologist at the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanoes in Bologna. He says that the constant accumulation of carbon dioxide underground could trigger earthquakes, breaking the Earth’s crust and allowing more carbon dioxide to creep upwards, which in turn generates more earthquakes.

If the carbon dioxide uprising exacerbates seismic activity in some areas, tracking the chemistry of local spring water could provide forecasters with a new tool to make their predictions, something that scientists did not have when the deadly earthquake stunned L’Aquila in 2009, Bailey says. In the aftermath of that disaster, six Italian scientists and a government official were found guilty of manslaughter for failing to adequately warn the public of the risk of earthquakes in the area – although the defendants were subsequently acquitted or reduced their sentences (SN: 1/23/13).

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