Magma under Svartsengi at record levels – eruption expected “in the coming days”, as it has been for eight months

Magma has been accumulating beneath Svartsengi for months, and the volume is now greater than at any point since the eruption sequence began. According to the latest notice, there is an “increased likelihood of an eruption in the coming days or weeks”. The same wording has been used every week since March.

“It's like waiting for a bus that has been ‘on its way’ since spring,” says a resident of the Reykjanes peninsula. “Except the bus is made of rock at 1,200 degrees.”

Geologists are divided. One group believes an eruption will begin within days. A second believes the magma has stopped rising and will look elsewhere. A third group, the largest, believes the other two are both wrong, without being willing to say what will happen instead.

“We can say with certainty that there will be an eruption,” says a geophysicist who spoke to Mysan. “Or not. On the Reykjanes peninsula. Or possibly somewhere else. This year or next, or in the coming centuries. The science is very clear on this.”

The disagreement has now spread to the staff kitchens. Tempers flared on Wednesday in Askja, the university's natural sciences building, when two professors argued over how to read the GPS data. One pointed out that the land had risen by 30 centimetres. The other pointed out that he had just risen from his chair, and that didn't mean he was about to erupt.

The tourism industry is waiting eagerly too. Coach companies have sold over four thousand tickets for “eruption tours” valid “when it erupts”, and some tourists who bought tickets in April are still at a hotel in Keflavík. “I've been here seven months,” says a German tourist. “I'm starting to speak Icelandic. I said ‘þetta reddast’ to a man yesterday and he hugged me.”

The Met Office has responded by announcing that it will from now on publish a combined weather and eruption forecast. The first one reads: “Showers, stiff breeze and possible dyke intrusion.”