The real fear is that it may well be followed by another massive volcano, Katla, some five times bigger, which would spew out far more of the stuff and could therefore cause far greater chaos.
Every time Ejyafjallajökull has blown its top since the Vikings first arrived on the island in the ninth century, Katla has swiftly followed.
Vulcanologists say these could just be the opening volleys of a decades-long barrage, as climate change takes hold. “Global warming melts ice and this can influence magmatic systems”, Dr Freysteinn Sigmundsson, of the Nordic Volcanological Centre at the University of Iceland, told Reuters. “Our work suggests that eventually there will be either somewhat larger eruptions or more frequent eruptions in Iceland in coming decades.”
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