Baroarbunga, one of the largest volcanoes in the whole of Iceland, has seen 130 earthquakes shatter its surrounding surfaces in just five hours, leading many to feel a full scale eruption will force flights to be severely disrupted.

Iceland has been the unfortunate home of many severe volcanic eruptions, with the most famous in recent times coming in 2010, when Eyjafjallajokull erupted, causing some 20 countries to close their airspace completely to travellers, impacting 10 million passengers looking to fly through, and out of Europe, as 100,000 flights were called off, and 80 million dollars was lost due to airport inactivity.

Aviation code yellow as fears spark that eruption imminent from earthquakes

Now experts fear a new travel threat may be on the horizon, albeit on a much smaller scale, as the aviation colour code (a signal for pilots warning them of volcanic ash, or other debris in the sky) has been set to yellow in Baroarbunga.

The volcano is situated under the single largest ice cap in Iceland, Vatnajokull, which last erupted ten years ago.

Any earthquake at a magnitude of six or greater can spur an eruption, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and a multitude of quakes at magnitude 5 have shaken the nearby area in central Iceland, worrying citizens and travellers alike that travel chaos may be on the horizon if an eruption takes place here.

“The unrest at Baroarbunga is an addition to long term inflation of the system over the last few years and could herald developments toward a new eruption”, Valentin Troll, Professor of Petrology and Geochemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden, told the Daily Mail.

Why do volcanoes erupt?

Volcanoes may indeed erupt if nearby tectonic plates shaken by earthquakes place enough magma in its volcanic system and apply significant pressure within its storage regions. “If these conditions exist, it is possible that large plates might cause dissolved gases to come out of the magma (like a shaken fizzy drink bottle), increasing the pressure and possibly leading to an eruption”, USGS states.

In addition to Eyjafjallajokull in 2010, Iceland has been the site of various other devastating volcanoes. In 2011, a volcano under the Vatnajokull glacier, the same glacier as Baroarbunga, erupted, which caused 900 flights to be cancelled throughout the whole of Europe in a short period. 

A decade ago, the largest volcano eruption in Iceland in over 200 years, Baroarbunga, took place, but it only impacted local travel.

So, while the threat looms of travel fear, citizens can be confident that this particular possible eruption will not pose too much of a danger to airports and flights throughout Europe.

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