Magma chamber growth during inter-caldera periods: insights from thermo-mechanical modeling with applications to Laguna del Maule, Campi Flegrei, Santorini, and Aso

Crustal magma chambers can grow to be hundreds to thousands of cubic kilometers, potentially feeding catastrophic caldera‐forming eruptions. Smaller‐volume chambers are expected to erupt frequently and freeze quickly; a major outstanding question is how magma chambers ever grow to the sizes required to sustain the largest eruptions on Earth. We use a thermo‐mechanical model to investigate the primary factors that govern the extrusive:intrusive ratio in a chamber, and how this relates to eruption frequency, eruption size, and long‐term chamber growth. The model consists of three fundamental timescales: the magma injection timescale τin, the cooling timescale τcool, and the timescale for viscous relaxation of the crust τrelax. We estimate these timescales using geologic and geophysical data from four volcanoes (Laguna del Maule, Campi Flegrei, Santorini, Aso) to compare them with the model. In each of these systems, τin is much shorter than τcool and slightly shorter than τrelax, conditions that in the model are associated with efficient chamber growth and simultaneous eruption. In addition, the model suggests that the magma chambers underlying these volcanoes are growing at rates between ~10‐4‐10‐2 km3/yr, speeding up over time as the chamber volume increases. We find scaling relationships for eruption frequency and size that suggest that as chambers grow and volatiles exsolve, eruption frequency decreases but eruption size increases. These scaling relationships provide a good match to the eruptive history from the natural systems, suggesting the relationships can be used to constrain chamber growth rates and volatile saturation state from the eruptive history alone.