One of Iceland's largest volcanoes Katla is showing increased signs of activity as observers today reported an increase in the strength of tell-tale earth tremors.
A swarm of earthquakes struck the 9-mile wide volcano, a week after geophysicists warned of an “imminent danger” of an eruption on the island.
The volcano is capable of producing four times the ash of Iceland’s last eruption in May.
Observers believe ‘unusual’ magma movement deep beneath Katla could signal the early stages of activity that could lead to a huge explosion – the depth of the latest earthquakes, that lasted for 5-and-half hours yesterday, was said to be 3.5km beneath the ground.
The earthquake activity around Katla has now been steadily gaining strength over the past five weeks.
Katla is known to have erupted 16 times over the past 1,000 years at intervals of 40–80 years. It has not significantly erupted for 92 years, although there may have been small eruptions that did not break the ice cover in 1955 and 1999.
Last year's eruption of Eyjafjallajökull triggered the mass closure of European air space as the resulting ash cloud was thought to pose a danger to aircraft engines.
In the past 1,000 years, all three known eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull have triggered subsequent Katla eruptions.
Geophysicists first reported Katla stirring in June when measuring devices picked up an increase in tremors.
On July 9, the Icelandic authorities started evacuating villages around the volcano after the critical detection of gases – an observation flight over the glacier-topped crater also reported cracks in the ice, suggesting a large meltdown of the glacier on the south-eastern rim of the Katla crater.
Seanie O'Keeffe, Ireland around 9 months, 4 weeks ago