Most of us already know that there are certain areas in the world that are more prone to earthquakes than others and that residents of these places, such as Southern California, Indonesia and parts of China, are quite used to it at this point. One such area that is accustomed to occasional tremors is the small island of Iceland.
There are earthquakes common due to the country protruding two of the Earth’s tectonic plates, both the North American and Eurasian plates. They remain divided by an underwater mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which radiates molten hot rock deep out of the earth.
Despite earthquakes common in Iceland, the country was unprepared for the events of the past week, including 18,000 earthquakes that hit the island in about a week. The earthquake swarm began on February 24 with a magnitude 5.7 earthquake, followed by thousands smaller.
“I have experienced earthquakes, but never so many in a row,” Reykjavik residents Auður Alfa Ólafsdóttir told CNN. “It is very unusual to feel the earth shaking 24 hours a day for a whole week. It makes you feel very small and powerless over nature.”
What scientists have to say
Geophysicists and volcanologists say that seismic activity on the island has intensified since December 2019, and although volcanoes in southwestern Iceland have remained quiet for about 800 years, they said the rest period could finally come to an end.
Experts claim that the severe earthquakes are the culmination of more than a year of seensic seismic activity, and that similar tremors have been observed before volcanic eruptions in the past. The Icelandic Meteorological Office told The New York Times that magma movements are a likely cause of the earthquake, and the agency warned that an eruption could occur within days or weeks.
“The two tectonic plates move apart, and the motion created the conditions for magma to reach the surface,” Freysteinn Sigmundsson, a research professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, told The New York Times.
Iceland has about 30 active volcanoes, but volcanologists have tried to allay residents’ fears of an impending eruption by saying that one in Reykjanes does not threaten uninhabited areas on the peninsula.
However, it can not be brought to Icelanders that they are concerned as the catastrophic eruptions of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull were released in 2010. The event was so intense that it caused one of the most important air traffic. interruptions in decades.
“Of course it worries people,” Þorvaldur Þórðarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland, told CNN. ‘For this region, it’s actually quite unusual, not because of the earthquakes or their intensity, but for their duration. It’s been going on for over a week now. ‘
Experts said that most of the damage expected from the possible impending eruption included power line damage, and that the road connecting the capital, Reykjavík, to the airport could be affected.
“The magma composition here is very different, the intensity of explosive activity will be significantly less,” Þórðarson said.
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