Essay by Eric Worrall
The super volcano which sits under Southern Italy just gave everyone a wakeup call.
Magnitude 4.7 Earthquake in Naples’ Campi Flegrei, the Strongest in 40 Years
Tremors felt in central part of the city as seismic swarm keeps alert levels high
Daniele Di Bartolomei
August 1, 2026Moments of extreme fear gripped Naples and its surrounding province as the ground shook with an intensity that many residents said they had not experienced in decades.
At 7:46 p.m. on Friday, July 31, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck the Campi Flegrei area, shaking the entire metropolitan area of Naples. The quake caused widespread damage, injured at least 21 people—two of them seriously—and forced thousands to spend another night in fear. According to authorities, it was one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the Phlegraean Fields in the past forty years.
…
Thousands of residents rushed into the streets fearing further collapses, while power outages were reported in several neighborhoods. Rail services and parts of the Naples metro network were temporarily suspended as safety inspections got underway.
…The main earthquake was followed by an intense seismic swarm. Dozens of aftershocks, some exceeding magnitude 3.0, continued throughout the night, prompting many families to sleep in their cars or in emergency gathering areas set up by Italy’s Civil Protection Department. The succession of tremors heightened anxiety among residents who have been living for years with the effects of bradyseism—the slow uplift and subsidence of the ground that characterizes the Campi Flegrei volcanic area.
Read more: https://lavocedinewyork.com/en/news/2026/08/01/magnitude-4-7-earthquake-in-naples-campi-flegrei-the-strongest-in-40-years/
…
Campi Flegrei last suffered a significant eruption in 1538, when a new 438ft hill Monte Nuovo appeared over a space of 7 days. You have to go back a lot further for really big eruptions, for example there was a large VEI 7 eruption 39 thousand years ago.
Campi Flegrei is significantly smaller than Yellowstone, but another VEI 7 eruption in Southern Italy would cause crop failures throughout Europe, and would likely impact the entire Northern Hemisphere. Having said that the risk of an eruption on that scale in our lifetimes is pretty unlikely.
A lesser eruption which threatens Naples and its surroundings is far more of a concern. Naples is built just down the road from Pompeii, the ancient Roman city which was famously destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. And as the appearance of Monte Nuovo in the 1500s shows, the region can still sometimes produce significant volcanic activity.
Let’s hope the Earthquake and the Earthquake swarm which followed is not a prelude to something worse.
What has this event to do with weather or climate..?
A VEI 7 eruption in Southern Europe would substantially impact Northern Hemisphere climate, possibly the entire world. In any case we cover other topics of interest such as AI.
That claim is unlikely as the Iceland eruptions were simililar and changed nothing.
Similar? To VEI 7? In Iceland?
The worst year in human history to be alive was 536 AD. A huge volcanic explosion in Iceland triggered world wide an entire year of crop failure and near-complete absence of sunlight for a year. It was followed by the worst plague outbreak the world has ever experienced. About 1/3rd of the world’s population perished from starvation, the plague and the bitter cold. It led directly to the temporary collapse of the East Roman Empire.
Your notion that “Icelandic eruptions..changed nothing” is simply silly.
Stuck in crayon mode again.
Will Neil ever learn to finger paint?
We tried letting him work with construction paper but he kept eating the paste.
Dang!!! Beat me to it!
We all know that CO2 in the atmosphere is the cause of natural disasters. — somehow. It’s settled science.
/sarc
Think MT Tambora and the 1815 eruption and subsequent “Year without a summer”
The Grand Solar Minima phenomenon is not just associated with changes in the cloud cover which is associated directly with changes in insolation.
At times when the maximum cooling is occurring, the cosmic ray influx previously screened out by the magnetic field of the sun seems to have an effect deep in the earth and there is an OBSERVED and RECORDED accompanying increase in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at the same time as the cooling. The amplification of the shading by particulate matter projected high into the atmosphere will add to the cooling.
Climate change must have something to do with this event. After all, isn’t it blamed for everything else? No doubt The Guardian, the BBC, the CBC an NPR, among others, will soon work the event into their narratives.
Google AI says:
Yes, climate change has been explicitly linked to and blamed for changing the frequency and timing of earthquakes by scientists
Apparently one of the things AIs have yet to learn is to ask (or analyze the databases for aspects that address the issue):
Does this make sense?
[since I doubt that the divorced-from-reality programmers responsible for AI development know how to answer it either]
Um, how? Enquiring minds and all that…
I thought that an interesting question.
So Googled. No less an alarmist organization than NASA.science.gov says it is true because earthquake strain/slippage depends on groundwater ‘lubricant’ or lack thereof. And climate change definitely affects groundwater—see the Colorado River alarm for ‘proof’.
There is just one tiny geological problem with NASA’s ‘sciency’ climate explanation. All earthquakes are at depth (usually several km), while there is no precipitation based surface ‘fresh’ groundwater anywhere on earth below about 1000 feet (so about 300 meters). We know that because all the millions of wells worldwide drilled deeper for oil and natgas contain only saltwater entrained from oceans by geologic processes. Same way we know ‘fossil fuels’ really are fossils (well, coal also has fossil leaves and fish—the IL state fossil is the ‘Tully Monster’ fish discovered only in IL coal beds).
Thank you very much; a good and fairly simple explanation for someone who is interested , but not even knowledgeble enough to ask the proper questions. Quakes and volcanism are a minor interest of mine-I lived near the New Madrid fault for about 10 years, and maps and air photos of the area were facinating to me-displaced streams, etc. The USDA has very good air photos of the New Madrid zone-I think better than sat. stuff because finer detail is available-but that could just be a personal prejudice. I now live a couple of hundred miles from a “crypto” volcanic feature-a diamond-um-tube? that one can literally pick up gem quality diamonds from the ground surface…and Hot Springs Arkansas is about a hundred miles south of me-and old lead mines are everywhere around me; you have to have your well tested to be safe, My info to you in return, so thanks again.
The New Madrid fault and massive early 1800’s earthquake is from a continental mid continental rift formed about 2.5 billion years ago geological anomaly. Likely won’t happen again.
As for your current residence near Crater of Diamonds state park in Arkansas (a diamond kimberlite pipe) and the associated hydrothermal lead mines—all related to New Madrid— my SW Wisconsin dairy farm was close (15 miles) to Dodgeville, part of which today is built over an old big former lead mine. I have a 10# nugget galena door stopper quarried on my farm many decades ago. But completely different geological genesis.
Rud. While I agree that another magnitude 8 earthquake associated with the New Madrid fault zone in unlikely anytime soon, stresses do continue to build there and will release eventually. I asked Gemini (Google Search) about that and was told
“Major catastrophic earthquakes (magnitude 7.0 or greater) on the New Madrid Seismic Zone occur roughly every 500 years, while smaller damaging quakes (magnitude 6.0+) happen about every 80 years. …”
I’d note that even “moderate” earthquakes can do an surprising amount of damage in older construction common in the Eastern and Central US. Example: The 1933 magnitude 6.4 Long Beach, CA earthquake killed 120 people and destroyed 70 schools which fortunately were not in session at the time of the quake. That led California to ban unreinforced masonry (I.e. “brick and mortar”) school buildings. https://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/earthquakes/long-beach
Was your farm in the “Driftless Region”? I had a small chunk of galena in my cool rock collection when I was about 9 or so. My Mom’s family is from near there and were dairy farmers as well as regular croppers back in the day-they sat on the porch of their farmhouse (still there) and watched the glow in the sky when Chicago burned 1871.
I knew about the mid-continent split that causes the ever continuing New Madrid quakes-small, now- that keep one’s attention focused. I guess the New Madrid zone gets serious about every 500 years or so? I read somewhere in my somewhat misguided and rambling education that the lead here and the hot springs in Arkansas and Georgia, as well as the gold in Georgia came from a “hot spot” that the NA continent moved over a seriously long time back. Said hot spot is supposed to be somehere E of the Bahamas now. Any truth to that theory?
At any rate, mucho thanks for the info and correspondence-if you got more interesting info, please share…this old (very old) retired Geographer still loves knowledge for its own sake.
PS: If the ave. American knew how geologically active the US is, and where, they’d S a brick.
Yes. It was in the Driftless Region.
I haven’t the faintest idea of how to code an heuristic learning program to know what constitutes ‘common sense’ in even one discipline. And THAT was the thought that led to the question: it’s been accepted by wiser folks than me (at least, folks that I thought had the wherewithal to develop even a smidgen of it) that it wasn’t ‘learnt from no book.’
I know your pain-or would it be aggravation?
If climate change can happen under the sea as many people claim, then it can happen under the ground as well. Pele was always about lava change. Also, there is already an organization named Earth Justice isn’t there? They are concerned lawyers for dirt change
There is a political aspect to this seismic activity. Some years ago there was an earthquake in central Italy with quite a number of fatalities. Afterwards geologists were put on trial for not having given enough warning, basically blaming them for not predicting where and when with sufficient precision. That such is impossible at the current state of the science did not bother the prosecutors.
As a result you will not find any geologist or volcanologist prepared to make public statement of dangers, remote or imminent. They may tell the politicians, with lawyers present, and then leave the judgement and decisions to the authorities. No prizes for knowing how that will pan out.
Good comment, Ed. At the risk of being burned alive at the stake, this geologist says that the aftershocks do not appear to be rhythmic seismic events from magma moving, instead there appears to have been a major fault moving, followed by aftershocks. So, I say a volcanic eruption is not imminent. Just in case I’m going to buy a fireman’s fire resistant suit.
“…rhythmic seismic events from magma moving…”
Is that the same thing mentioned in the Hunt for Red October movie? The sonar operator detected a rhythm he determined to be similar to “magma displacement” which he then used to locate the submarine’s “caterpillar drive.”
Come on, David. How many caterpillars would it take to power a submarine?
Or how many hamster wheels?
Better not go to Italy any time soon, just in case…
It is not that the scientists didn’t give enough warning. They in fact did the opposite, they assured the population that there would be NO earthquakes.
ooops.
The effect on the current cohort of scientists is the same. I understood there was a lot of dithering and pressure from local politicians to not raise alarm since that would have been bad for business.
That’s horrifying Ed, I didn’t know about that. Thanks for the headsup.
I sure hope there was no damage in Pompeii at the dig sites.
I don’t ever trust MSM headlines.
Those are (paraphrasing) 4.7 Campi Flegrei earthquake, strongest in 40 years (referring to the strong earthquake swarm of 1983-84)! So sorta true.
BUT
There was a 4.6 Campi Flegrei Naples earthquake in June 2025. So also sorta NOT true. And for good measure, there was also a Naples 4.4 in March 2025. So two Richter scale near equivalent earthquakes in Naples just last year, all just down the road from Pompeii!!!
I wouldn’t want to live in Naples. But not because of earthquakes. My daughter took her family to Italy for a month last summer. (She and her husband are ‘educating’ my two grandsons outside of school with adventure travel each summer. This year it was the Pampas of southern Argentina for two weeks. Strait of Magellan penguins. Next year it will be Japan. I already told her to book a traditional geisha served Japanese dinner at the Green Bamboo restaurant on a bamboo covered mountainside outside Osaka.) First Italy stop was Pompeii, with an associated two day stay in Naples. Filthy, graffiti strewn Naples. Worst Italian city they visited all month—including Venice, Rome, Florence, Genoa, and Milan.
I agree, Naples looks rough from the one time I visited many years ago. I strongly suspect if you tried to set up a business there you’d have the Mafia knocking on your door looking for community contributions before the paint dried.
Green Bamboo restaurant
Rud,
I’ll be in Osaka next year. Do you have details of this restaurant? A quick search reveals nothing.
TIA
The restaurant’s Japanese name is Arashiyama Kumahiko, adjacent to the famed Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. It is located near the western outskirts of Kyoto, about 30 minutes from Osaka proper. Tatami mat seating, but for westerners they have a pit under the table for comfortably dangling legs. Traditional Kaiseki meal courses. Reservations are mandatory.
Thank you so much, Rud. I really appreciate that.
Shawn Willsey has a YouTube post that points out the recent earthquakes have all been shallow, less then 3 km. or so, well above where the magma pool is. He suggests that this is another of similar periods, e.g. 1980s, and not indicative of of a volcanic eruption. Instead, it may be a hydrothermal process. He does have a graph showing increased rainfall over decades, but I suspect that’s not a main driver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJQsiul0EwE
So maybe add this to the “Yellowstone – ready to blow?” hype.
Given knowledge of what observations precede a supervolcano eruption = zero, I’m not confident anyone can deliver that sort of certainty. For all we know it’s a steam explosion which blows the magma cap.
But they’re rare enough so the human lifetime scale risk is negligible.
It’s probably due to all the fracking they do in Italy.
Just looked that up, “no major shale gas fracking operations have been permitted in Italy.”
Never mind.
A 4.7 earthquake is nothing, a 3 is barely felt. The only reason Naples is rushing around is the buildings in most of the city are garbage built barely managing to stand there with zero motion of the ground. Italy needs a wake up call to get through the bureaucrat change nothing mindset. Having the mountain do a nice Mt. St. Helens on Naples would fix a lot of Italy’s problems. Hard on the people but they refuse to change and elect politicians who refuse to change.
The biggest Earthquake I’ve experienced is a 5.2, but the epicentre was over 50 miles away, so I wasn’t even sure it was an Earthquake until I checked. If a 4.7 happened right under your feet I think you’d notice.
A 4.7, under your feet, especially IF shallow, would be something to call home about.
And of course, some earthquakes do more damage than others, the energy released is one thing, the RATE at which it is released is another. I’d much rather be exposed to a long duration, deep earthquake than a shallow short duration one, especially if it was a lateral slip/thrust type like the west coast of the south island of NZ.
The lateral acceleration of the ground can do a lot of damage, some earthquake types are particularly capable of releasing their energy in this form rather than vertical ground waves which in simplistic terms result in the energy being directed in the same orientation as gravity, something all building have been exposed to and are normally well built to resist.
I experienced this one and I can assure you 5+ is quite obviously a quake!!
“Earthquake: Mag 5.4 / 10 km (6.2 mi) depth
23 years ago
Feb 22, 2003 20:41 GMT / Feb 22, 2003 08:41 pm (Universal Time)” ALSACE VOSGES!!
Unfortunately USGS chose to not work out a tensor diagram for this one due to it being under M5 (I guess); it would have been interesting to determine what the fault (or magma) movement was. Epicentre depth was 5 km, and a couple of km NE of the general last eruptive area. (I doubt anyone will feel ‘Aw, that’s far enough away.’)
As for the mention of the legal action taken against geologists and an emergency planning manager for that previous earthquake in Italy mentioned above, if memory is correct the prosecution was because of a specific statement with confidence that there would NOT be a major earthquake and people took them at their word. I admit that the difference is nuanced, but it hinged on the fact that positive statements were made by qualified professionals that were wrong and were deemed to have caused public harm. Ethics rules (at least with EGBC) state that the primary responsibility of registered professionals is protection of the public.
Again if memory is correct it ended up with the geologists not convicted, but the emergency manager was. I’m not aware of appeals if any. I bet it cost them all plenty in legal fees, from which they will for ever remember the value of the simple phrase’I don’t know’.
I visited Pompei years ago. Very impressive advanced society for the time. Had a guide who took us into dwellings with incredible paintings and running water. The piping system was lead pipes.
We lived in southern Calif in west LA and I had an office in Culver City. Many earthquakes. The office was in a 4 story building and I was in the top floor during the Whitter quake. Building swayed, pretty uncomfortable. Lived in Westchester near LAX and went out one morning for a short bike ride. Came back and reached for the house door handle and the door started shaking, Looked at the street and the pavement looked like rolling waves.
The worst was the Northridge quake. We had a house in Topanga Cyn high up near the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains. The quake happened about 4:30am and the house shook incredibly. We were 6 miles from the epicenter. Fortunately it was built on solid bedrock. Lost glassware but not much else. Had a friend who lived in Encino, house built on sandstone. The house was lost and condemned. During the Big Bear quake I had a friend who lost a house which was condemned.
Of course the San Francisco quake was devastating with freeway collapse cars crushed etc.
Calif is blessed with great weather but cursed by earthquakes, fires, and floods.
And cursed by crazy liberals.
Certainly true Rud. When I got to so Cal to teach path at UCLA in the 70s it was fairly conservative with Reagan then Wilson. Incidentally my receptionist was a musician and her husband a singer both in their 60s. They had played with Reagan in Las Vegas in the late 40s. One day she asked me for time off, Reagan had invited them to his office (after he left the presidency) just for a visit.
Brown let the public employees unionize the teachers being the largest. All the public employees then supported democrats and thus the downhill slide started.
Now it’s crazy. Schiff and anchor baby Padilla in the senate ad others in congress just as bad.
I lived in Sydney Australia in the 90s still somewhat sane for what is a liberal democracy. Now bonkers with a crazy labor govt going the same renewable route as the UK and deindustrializing fast as Eric as said many times.
There is no Depth to which a good Liberal Socialist won’t attempt to climb.
And politicians.
Fun Roman lead pipe factoids.
Lead water pipes were not an actual Roman civilization problem, as they rapidly calcium scaled internally then sealed from the naturally hard waters of limestone based Italy. Lead was a useful byproduct of Roman silver production (from galena) so this use made sense.
The Flint Michigan problem rose because they suddenly changed water sources without adjusting water pH, so the sealing scale rapidly dissolved.
The Roman lead problem arose because they also used lead pots to cook their (mostly bad wine by today’s standards) wine sweetener ‘sapa’. Mostly amongst the upper classes, as Nero proved. Of course, more wine=more crazy happens even without added lead pot poisoning. According to historical Roman records, lead pot cooked ‘sapa’ tasted sweeter than ceramic pot cooked ‘sapa’.
I love visiting Monterey/Pebble Beach/Big Sur, and I am returning next week when I attend the PB Concours d’ Elegance and Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca, but no way in hell would I ever live in California, and this is coming from someone who is a lifelong NY State resident….
Everyone is referring to Pompeii, however there were three other towns that were destroyed one is located in modern Naples, Herculaneum, which hasn’t been as excavated as Pompeii as parts of Naples city are built over the site. The eruption of Vesuvius that did this damage is estimated to have released as much thermal energy as 100,000 Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs combined, ejecting 1.5 million tons of material per second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruption_of_Mount_Vesuvius_in_79_AD
Good point John. I think the short version is I’d want to be on a different continent, preferably a different hemisphere, if any of the Campi Flegrei volcanoes let go in a big way.
Pliny the Elder described as an eyewitness the Vesuvius eruption from the ‘safe’ far side of Naples bay. The volcanic ash alone provided a thick floating cover to the entire bay. Roman ‘rescue’ boats were overwhelmed if not then burned up. A classic felsic eruption.
(Two basic volcano types—felsic, where the molten magma comes from lighter ‘surface’ silica plate tectonic crust, and basaltic, where the magma comes from deeper heavier basaltic mantle—examples include the Hawaii and Iceland volcanoes.)
In other news, the cost of hotel rooms in Rio de Janeiro and Miami just jumped 30%.
Somebody had better check the Leaning Tower of Pizza.
Where is it? I see no “climate change” listed as the cause.
/sarc