The serious seismic crisis that is hitting the Aegean Sea off the Greek island of Santorini since January 27 seems to be at a turning point. To date, more than two thousand earthquakes have been recorded with magnitude up to 5.3 but for hours the Greek seismic stations have been monitoring an intense and continuous tremor: it is assumed that the swarm can be connected to the magma movement and high temperature fluids.
Over 10 thousand residents have left the island while the epicenter of the earthquakes move a straight line back and forth.
In addition, according to the GPS data of the seismic stations it emerged that from July 2024 the swelling of the volcano is underway, with an acceleration starting from the end of January, when the imposing seismic swarm began. Unlike before, however, these stations began to show some differences: the soil of the Caldera had started to sink, while its eastern edge continued undaunted to deform horizontally towards the east and north, in practice in the direction of the swarm.
In addition to the deformations, the researchers have used cutting -edge software to restore all the epicenter of the earthquakes that have taken place between Santorini and Amorgos since the summer of 2024 in February 2025 in a more accurate way. This has made it possible to identify a certain microsismicity that from September 2024 is progressively migrated by the Caldera di Santorini to the north-east, up to the current position. The data combined with each other suggest that a magmatic dicco could be at the origin of the events.
This does not totally explain the progressive increase in magnitude of events and above all their constancy. And here the fluids come into play: it is possible that the magmatic intrusion has caused a migration of fluids at high temperature and pressure along the active faults that bord the islands of Santorini, Anydros and Amorgos. So we would be faced with a complex volcano-tetty crisis, which would not be purely tectonic and purely volcanic.