The Reykjanes peninsula in south-west Iceland trembled with an intense swarm of earthquakes on the afternoon of Friday November 10. Hundreds of quakes were detected on the regional networks of seismometers and several were strong enough to be felt in Reykjavik, 50 kilometres away.
A civil protection alert was called warning of the risk of an eruption – which would be the fourth since 2021. Why is this happening again, and what might happen next?
Iceland straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the North American and Eurasian plates creep apart at about 2cm a year. In the Earth’s mantle below ground, where rocks behave like very stiff toffee, the plates can extend continuously.
