Chasing Magma Around Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula

By Alka Tripathy-Lang

May 25, 2021

In December 2019, Reykjanes Peninsula, which juts into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavík, began experiencing intense seismic swarms. Since then, scientists at the Icelandic Meteorological Office have been tracking and monitoring deformation of Earth’s surface as magma pushed (intruded) itself into the shallow crust. Three initial intrusions occurred near Mount Thorbjörn, just outside the town of Grindavík. A fourth intrusion slightly inflated the peninsula’s westernmost tip, and a fifth intrusion leapfrogged back east, beyond Grindavík, to Krýsuvík, according to Sara Barsotti, an Italian volcanologist and coordinator for volcanic hazards at the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

For the full story, head to Eos. Here’s a translation in Spanish.