The Canarian Archipelago is a group of volcanic islands on a slow-moving oceanic plate, close to a continental margin. The origins of the archipelago are controversial: a hotspot or mantle plume, a zone of lithospheric deformation, a region of compressional block-faulting or a rupture propagating westwards from the active Atlas Mountains fold belt have been proposed by different authors. However, comparison of the Canarian Archipelago with the prototypical hotspot-related island group, the Hawaiian Archipelago, reveals that the differences between the two are not as great as had previously been supposed on the basis of older data. Quaternary igneous activity in the Canaries is concentrated at the western end of the archipelago, close to the present-day location of the inferred hotspot. This is the same relationship as seen in the Hawaiian and Cape Verde islands. The latter archipelago, associated with a well-defined but slow-moving mantle plume, shows anomalies in a plot of island age against distance which are comparable to those seen in the Canary Islands: these anomalies cannot therefore be used to argue against a hotspot origin for the Canaries. Individual islands in both archipelagoes are characterized by initial rapid growth (the ‘shield-building’ stages of activity), followed by a period of quiescence and deep erosion (erosion gap) which in turn is followed by a ‘post-erosional’ stage of activity. The absence of post-shield stage subsidence in the Canaries is in marked contrast with the major subsidence experienced by the Hawaiian Islands, but is comparable with the lack of subsidence evident in other island groups at slow-moving hotspots, such as the Cape Verdes. Comparison of the structure and structural evolution of the Canary Islands with other oceanic islands such as Hawaii and Réunion reveals many similarities. These include the development of triple (‘Mercedes Star’) rift zones and the occurrence of giant lateral collapses on the flanks of these rift zones. The apparent absence of these features in the post-erosional islands may in part be a result of their greater age and deeper erosion, which has removed much of the evidence for their early volcanic architecture. We conclude that the many similarities between the Canary Islands and island groups whose hotspot origins are undisputed show that the Canaries have been produced in the same way.

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It has been suggested that the release of clathrates rather than expansion of wetlands is the primary cause of the rapid increases observed in the ice-core atmospheric methane record during the Pleistocene. Because submarine sediment failures can involve as much as 5000 Gt of sediment and have the capacity to release vast quantities of methane hydrates, one of the major tests of the clathrate gun hypothesis is determining whether the periods of enhanced continental-slope failure and atmospheric methane correlate. To test the clathrate gun hypothesis, we have collated published dates for submarine sediment failures in the North Atlantic sector and correlated them with climatic change for the past 45 k.y. More than 70% by volume of continental-slope failures during the past 45 k.y. was displaced in two periods, between 15 and 13 ka and between 11 and 8 ka. Both these intervals correlate with rising sea level and peaks in the methane record during the Bølling-Å llerød and Preboreal periods. These data support the clathrate gun hypothesis for glacial-interglacial transitions. The data do not, however, support the clathrate gun hypothesis for glacial millennial-scale climate cycles, because the occurrence of sediment failures correlates with Heinrich events, i.e., lows in sea level and atmospheric methane. A secondary use of this data set is the insight into the possible cause of continental-slope failures. Glacial-period slope failures occur mainly in the low latitudes and are associated with lowering sea level. This finding suggests that reduced hydrostatic pressure and the associated destabilization of gas hydrates may be the primary cause. The Bølling-Å llerød sediment failures were predominantly low latitude, suggesting an early tropical response to deglaciation, e.g., enhanced precipitation and sediment load to the continental shelf or warming of intermediate waters. In contrast, sediment failures during the Preboreal period and the majority of the Holocene occurred in the high latitudes, suggesting either isostatic rebound-related earthquake activity or reduced hydrostatic pressure caused by isostatic rebound, causing destabilization of gas hydrates.

Gas hydrates are ice-like deposits containing a mixture of water and gas; the most common gas is methane. Gas hydrates are stable under high pressures and relatively low temperatures and are found underneath the oceans and in permafrost regions. Estimates range from 500 to 10 000 giga tonnes of carbon (best current estimate 1600-2000 GtC) stored in ocean sediments and 400 GtC in Arctic permafrost. Gas hydrates may pose a serious geohazard in the near future owing to the adverse effects of global warming on the stability of gas hydrate deposits both in ocean sediments and in permafrost. It is still unknown whether future ocean warming could lead to significant methane release, as thermal penetration of marine sediments to the clathrate-gas interface could be slow enough to allow a new equilibrium to occur without any gas escaping. Even if methane gas does escape, it is still unclear how much of this could be oxidized in the overlying ocean. Models of the global inventory of hydrates and trapped methane bubbles suggest that a global 3• C warming could release between 35 and 940 GtC, which could add up to an additional 0.5• C to global warming. The destabilization of gas hydrate reserves in permafrost areas is more certain as climate models predict that high-latitude regions will be disproportionately affected by global warming with temperature increases of over 12• C predicted for much of North America and Northern Asia. Our current estimates of gas hydrate storage in the Arctic region are, however, extremely poor and non-existent for Antarctica. The shrinking of both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in response to regional warming may also lead to destabilization of gas hydrates. As ice sheets shrink, the weight removed allows the coastal region and adjacent continental slope to rise through isostacy. This removal of hydrostatic pressure could destabilize gas hydrates, leading to massive slope failure, and may increase the risk of tsunamis.

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SUMMARY In the early morning of 1888 March 13, roughly 5 km3 of Ritter Island Volcano fell violently into the sea northeast of New Guinea. This event, the largest lateral collapse of an island volcano to be recorded in historical time, flung devastating tsunami tens of metres high on to adjacent shores. Several hundred kilometres away, observers on New Guinea chronicled 3 min period waves up to 8 m high, that lasted for as long as 3 h. These accounts represent the best available first‐hand information on tsunami generated by a major volcano lateral collapse. In this article, we simulate the Ritter Island landslide as constrained by a 1985 sonar survey of its debris field and compare predicted tsunami with historical observations. The best agreement occurs for landslides travelling at 40 m s−1, but velocities up to 80 m s−1 cannot be excluded. The Ritter Island debris dropped little more than 800 m vertically and moved slowly compared with landslides that descend into deeper water. Basal friction block models predict that slides with shorter falls should attain lower peak velocities and that 40+ m s−1 is perfectly compatible with the geometry and runout extent of the Ritter Island landslide. The consensus between theory and observation for the Ritter Island waves increases our confidence in the existence of mega‐tsunami produced by oceanic volcano collapses two to three orders of magnitude larger in scale.

Lateral collapses of large volcanoes are commonly associated with phreatic explosions and other evidence for the presence of pressurized hydrothermal pore fluids within the volcanoes prior to collapse. Furthermore, hydrothermal alteration of volcanic edifices is a major factor in increasing susceptibility to collapse. This is generally held to be because of a reduction in effective friction coefficient # through alteration. However, this is inconsistent with an analysis of the factors affecting the strength of fluid-saturated rocks and volcanic debris in terms of the Rubey & Hubbert equations for shear failure of such materials. Instead, this analysis indicates that reductions in the strength of volcanic materials are mainly due to the effect of high pore pressure relative to confining pressure, expressed as the ratio & of the two. Consideration of field and seismic evidence, together with simple calculations, indicates that high values of, and large increases in, )~ are produced by a variety of mechanisms: heating of confined pore water by intrusions; degassing of intrusions; discharges of highly pressurized fluids from depth through clastic dykes; and by deformation associated with faulting. The sensitivity of pore fluid pressures to perturbation by these mechanisms is however highly dependent upon the permeability of their host rocks, which may itself be subject to rapid changes by fracturing, faulting and other processes. The rapidity of temperature changes and other mechanisms for pressurization in volcanic edifices means that the resultant pore pressure changes are large even in quite highly permeable rocks, but the effects are unpredictable. Detection of the development and spreading of high pore pressures within active volcanoes may however be possible by careful monitoring of patterns of seismicity.