In Iceland, 18,000 Earthquakes Over Days Signal Possible Eruption on the Horizon
The earthquake swarm is the culmination of more than a year of intense seismic activity. It could also herald decades of intermittent volcanic eruptions.
The Bridge Between Continents, a footbridge linking the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates, near Grindavik, Iceland. The residents of Gridavik have been on alert for potential volcanic activity.Credit…Halldor Kolbeins/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
By Elian Peltier
New York Times
Volcanoes in southwestern Iceland have been quiet for 800 years, but the period of rest may soon be over: More than 18,000 earthquakes have shaken the area in just over a week, leading scientists to believe that an eruption could be imminent.
Geophysicists and volcanologists say the quakes are the culmination of over a year of intense seismic activity, and although most of the tremors have lasted a few seconds, with light shaking, they have rattled residents in the capital, Reykjavik, just 20 miles north of the Reykjanes Peninsula where they have occurred.
“People in Reykjavik are waking up with an earthquake, others go to sleep with an earthquake,” said Thorvaldur Thordarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland. “There’s a lot of them, and that worries people, but there’s nothing to worry about, the world is not going to collapse.”
Earthquakes are common in Iceland because it straddles two of the Earth’s tectonic plates, the North American and Eurasian, which are divided by an undersea mountain chain, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The ridge oozes molten hot rock, or magma, from deeper in the Earth, forcing the plates to spread apart and causing quakes on the island.
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