While earthquakes are a common occurrence in Iceland, the country’s meteorological office (IMO) reported on Friday that, lately, they have been more active than usual.
According to the office, the Nordic Island Nation’s Reykjanes Peninsula, located in the southwest, has been experiencing a “seismic swarm” of earthquakes over the last three days, with at least 5,800 recorded since the “swarm” first began.
“These earthquakes are a warning sign, a part of a longer-term story that we know we’re entering a buildup phase to the next [volcanic] eruption,” said Matthew Roberts, the head of the IMO’s service and research division.
Roberts believes the earthquakes are being caused by a long-term accumulation of magma that has been building pressure and is now drifting towards the surface. He adds that the origin of the earthquakes are up to three miles (5 kilometers) below the surface of Earth.
The office reported that a vast majority of the quakes had been under magnitude 2.0, but that two more recent quakes were measured over a magnitude of 4.0. A tremor recorded on Thursday had a magnitude of 4.5, just north of the fishing town of Grindavík where about 2,000 people live.
The Reykjanes peninsula has already experienced a volcanic eruption earlier this year after some intense earthquake activity, in the third such event to have occurred in the area since 2021.
“From my perspective as a scientist and someone who’s been following this activity very closely, I would say that an eruption within the next 12 months is likely,” Roberts said.
But the local officials don’t want to wait that long—Iceland’s national police commissioner recently declared a Civil Protection “Level of Uncertainty,” that encourages residents to prepare for more serious earthquakes by securing items in their homes and being cautious around areas where rock slides could occur.