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A spate of hundreds of earthquakes, including two above magnitude 5.0 and at least seven others above magnitude 4.5, shook Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula on Friday. The seismic swarm indicates a possible eruption of the Reykjanes volcano in the coming days and has prompted the Icelandic Meteorological Office to declare a civil protection alert.
The Fagradalsfjall volcano is located on the southern peninsula of Iceland, about 25 miles southwest of the capital Reykjavik. Multiple earthquakes have rocked the city and have already led to the closure of Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, a geothermal resort. It was initially unclear whether Fagradalsfjall was responsible for the increased seismic activity or whether an eruption was brewing elsewhere in the Reykjanes volcanic system.
Code Orange level 3 out of 4 was displayed on the universal ground-based volcano alert scale, causing concern at nearby Keflavik International Airport, which lies northwest of the seismically active region.
The Icelandic Met Office wrote that the earthquakes occurred about 2 miles northeast of Grindavík and the faults occurred about 2 to 3 miles underground.
“The signs now seen… are similar to those seen on the eve of the first eruption at Fagradalsfjall in 2021 and are very similar to the seismic activity measured about a month before this eruption,” the Icelandic wrote Met Office.
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The most likely scenario is that it will take several days for magma to reach the surface and an eruption to occur.
Nevertheless, the quake has already begun broken roadways. It appears that up to three inches of uplift, or vertical movement, of the ground has occurred near the volcano.
A total of 295 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater were recorded in the past 72 hours, more than 90 percent of them in the past day.
While Iceland is tectonically and volcanically active, this particular region around the Fagradalsfjall volcano lay dormant for more than 6,300 years prior to December 2019. At that time, a spate of earthquakes, including two with a magnitude of 5.6, shook the peninsula. Then on February 4, 2021, a magnitude 5.7 earthquake caused minor damage to homes. Six weeks later, on March 19, the volcano erupted when a fissure about 2,000 feet long began spewing lava.
It was later named Geldingadalsgos, suggesting a possible new shield volcano, and attracted many tourists. Several more columns opened in April, but only one remained active as of May 2021. Another eruption from a separate fissure of Fagradalsfjall occurred on August 3, 2022.
Then last summer, in early July, a new eruption began near Litli-Hrútur, also part of the Fagradalsfjall volcano. It was about ten times larger than the first two eruptions. The number finally decreased by August 5th.
Another eruption of this magnitude is likely to occur in the wider Fagradalsfjall region on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Residents and travelers need not worry about a repeat of 2010, when an explosive eruption occurred at Eyjafjallajökull in south-central Iceland. It ejected 330,000,000 million cubic meters of material and created an ash cloud that rose almost eight kilometers high. Most of European airspace was closed to aviation between April 15 and 20, 2010.