MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Jane O’Brien – “Hundreds of metres under one of Iceland’s largest glaciers there are signs of a looming volcanic eruption that could be one of the most powerful the country has seen in almost a century.

Mighty Katla, with its 10km (6.2 mile) crater, has the potential to cause catastrophic flooding as it melts the frozen surface of its caldera and sends billions of gallons of water surging through Iceland’s east coast and into the Atlantic Ocean.

‘There has been a great deal of seismic activity,’ says Ford Cochran, the National Geographic’s expert on Iceland.

There were more than 500 tremors in and around the caldera of Katla just in October, which suggests the motion of magma.

‘And that certainly suggests an eruption may be imminent.’

Scientists in Iceland have been closely monitoring the area since 9 July, when there appears to have been some sort of disturbance that may have been a small eruption.

Eruption ‘long overdue’?

Even that caused significant flooding, washing away a bridge across the country’s main highway and blocking the only link to other parts of the island for several days.

‘The 9 July event seems to mark the beginning of a new period of unrest for Katla, the fourth we know in the last half century,’ says Professor Pall Einarsson, who has been studying volcanoes for 40 years and works at the Iceland University Institute of Earth Sciences.

‘The possibility that it may include a larger eruption cannot be excluded,’ he continues. ‘Katla is a very active and versatile volcano. It has a long history of large eruptions, some of which have caused considerable damage.’

The last major eruption occurred in 1918 and caused such a large glacier meltdown that icebergs were swept into the ocean by the resulting floods.” Read more.