Volcano on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula erupts for the 7th time in a year

In the case of the Reykjanes peninsula following a long period of hiatus (~780 years), seismic and volcanic unrest began in 2020, accompanied by inflation—this suggested new melt was indeed making its way into the crust,

Jenni Barclay, a volcanologist at the University of Bristol, told Newsweek

Unfortunately, when lava comes flowing into your neighborhood, there are only a few things you can do,

Barclay said ... pointing to impressive barriers and ditches erected in the region to direct lava flows

This is not a tourist attraction, and you must watch it from a great distance,

said Vidir Reynisson, head of Iceland’s Civil Protection and Emergency Management

Grindavík is not in danger as it looks and it is unlikely that this crack will get any longer, although nothing can be ruled out,

Magnús Tumi said

In the big picture, this is a bit smaller than the last eruption, and the eruption that occurred in May,

Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson, a professor of geophysics who flew over the scene with the Civil Protection agency to monitor the event, told national broadcaster RUV

Tamsin Matherbritish Professor of Earth sciences

If the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, you could get really bad impacts on the air quality in Reykjavik, for example, which is a major area of population in Iceland,

Mather said

One sequence of events that people have anticipated but that we haven't seen yet in this eruption is if the fissures propagate through Grindavik and then erupt underwater. Then there's a prospect of more violent eruptions,

Pyle said

Tamsin Matherbritish Professor of Earth sciences

One of the other things to answer is why does something sit peacefully for hundreds of years and then decide to switch on again

asked Mather

How do you cope with long-term uncertainty, particularly if you once lived in Grindavík?"

Pyle questioned

Tamsin Matherbritish Professor of Earth sciences

This activity will go on for maybe a decade, possibly decades,

Tamsin Mather, professor of Earth sciences at the University of Oxford, told Newsweek

The last time we saw this, it lasted decades to hundreds of years,

David Pyle, professor of Earth sciences at the University of Oxford, told Newsweek

The outpourings are lower and the lava is not flowing as fast,

added Ofeigsson

About fifty houses were occupied in recent nights,

said the civil protection department

Due to a volcanic eruption that commenced in Sundhnúksgígar on November 20, we took the precautionary measure of evacuating and temporarily closing all our operational units.

A statement on their website reads

There is currently nothing in danger, and if this does not develop much differently than it has been doing, the infrastructure should escape this quite well."

Benedikt Ófeigsson from the Norwegian Meteorological Agency told local media Channel 2: