Overview
- Volcanologist Bill McGuire renewed his warning in a BBC Science Focus piece that a catastrophic failure of Cumbre Vieja’s western flank could launch a transatlantic tsunami, and he cited a worst‑case computer model that estimates about 65‑foot waves could reach Florida in roughly nine hours.
- McGuire and his team say the western flank was partly detached in 1949 and has been creeping seaward at about 0.4 to 0.8 inches per year, which they say creates long‑term instability at the volcano.
- Scientists emphasize that tsunami modeling is highly sensitive to assumptions about how much rock fails, how fast it moves, and how it breaks up, so estimates of wave height at U.S. shores vary widely and remain contested.
- Geological evidence sometimes cited to support ocean‑crossing tsunamis includes large, out‑of‑place boulders in the Bahamas, but that origin is disputed and alternate explanations such as storms or local processes exist.
- A collapse need not coincide with an eruption because internal weakening from gas or rock failure can trigger a fast landslide, historical events show local tsunamis can be deadly, and experts say any Atlantic catastrophe could still be centuries or millennia away which makes monitoring and more research the near‑term priority.