2023-11-18 10:46:39
According to the Icelandic Meteorological Office, the magma is getting closer and closer to the earth’s surface. The molten rock is now at a depth of around 500 meters compared to 800 meters last Tuesday. Never seen before in Iceland! The country has around 130 still active volcanoes and sits directly on what is known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a fissure in the ocean floor that actually separates two tectonic plates (North American and Eurasian). These deviate from each other by approximately 2 cm per year.
Although it is not easy to predict the key moment of an eruption, for Corentin Caudron, volcanologist and professor at ULB, it will occur in the coming weeks or days. While we know exactly how deep the magma is, we don’t really know what the volcano is doing. It is, in part, cooling at the ends but continues to receive volumes from depth. And so it’s continuing to swell. “This is why, I think that in the long term, we will still move towards an eruption. We need more measurements and we need more models to improve our knowledge” says Corentin Caudron. There are, for the moment, two ULB researchers on site who collect and transmit the information.
The risk that the evacuated city will be completely buried and disappear is real. Approximately every 800 years, the Reykjanes Peninsula will experience this type of event for several decades. The 3 previous eruptions were in the “good place” and did not affect populations. This is therefore the first time that Iceland has had to completely evacuate a small town of nearly 4,000 people.
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