![]() Most of these earthquakes were less than 5 km (2 miles) deep. By January 23, earthquakes were also occurring near Namakani Paio campground. Less than a week later, on January 16, an unusual number of earthquakes started to occur, both in the upper east rift zone and in the area south of Halema`uma`u Crater. Instead, this tilt event seemed to trigger an acceleration of the inflation that had started in 2003. This time, however, Pu`u `O`o seemed unaffected. ![]() Such events are related to brief changes in magma-pressure beneath the summit, and often the tiltmeter at Pu`u `O`o shows the same pattern, with a slight time delay. Over the span of a few hours, the summit tiltmeter recorded rapid deflation, immediately followed by rapid inflation. ![]() This period of unrest began with a rather common "tilt event" at Kīlauea's summit on January 10, 2006. Then, in January 2006, the rate of inflation increased dramatically, and, through mid-March, the summit area was rattled by several hundred small earthquakes (magnitude 1 to 3.5). The summit continued to inflate at variable rates for the last two years. Of course, Kīlauea had already been erupting along its east rift zone for 20 years by the time the summit inflation started. When a volcano starts to inflate, we generally interpret it as a sign that it is more likely to erupt. A rapid increase in distance can be interpreted as inflation of the summit magma reservoir. This graph shows the change in distance between two Global Positioning System (GPS) stations located on opposite sides of Kīlauea's caldera.
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