The Santorini Seismic Crisis – A New Challenge for Seismology

Abstract

A short informative note about the started seismic crisis near Santorini Island is prepared discussing all proposed scenarios by the scientific community. Avoiding speculations of nonspecialists all factors ”pro” and ”anti” of the discussed scenarios are systemized and presented as a comparative table. An expert assessment of the probabilities of occurrence of each scenario is shown and defended by the arguments of “pro” and “anti”. The unusual appearance and development of the earthquake swarm have strong societal and scientific resonance. This generated large preventive measures from the national and local authorities. These initial measures are targeted to the people's evacuation, civil defense preparation and presence “at the spot”, warning issues to the population to near located islands, scientific equipment deployment in and around the affected area, etc. The presented opinion is just to focus the attention for wider and deeper investigations of such phenomena.