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SCIENTISTS warned that a giant Icelandic volcano was preparing for an eruption.
According to researchers, Katla, a "very dangerous" volcano in Iceland, is showing signs that it may be about to fly.
Icelandic and British volcanologists have detected that Katla – Icelandic for "kettle" – emits carbon dioxide on a large scale, suggesting that the magmatic chambers fill up quickly.
According to the Sunday Times, scientists believe it could be an eruption that could overshadow the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010.
This has seen a vast stifling veil of boiling ash drifting into the world's busiest airspace, effectively anchoring all European air travel.
A recent research report in the journal Geophysical Research Letters revealed that Katla daily reported between 12 and 24 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide.
It is known that only two other volcanoes in the world currently generate more volcanoes.
In the paper, the team wrote: "Thanks to high-precision airborne measurements and atmospheric dispersion modeling, we show that Katla, a highly dangerous subglacial volcano that erupted 100 years ago, is one of the most the largest volcanic sources of CO2. up to five percent of total global volcanic emissions.
Sarah Barsotti, Volcanic Risk Coordinator at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, said: "There is no way to say when it will burst, just that it will."
The Sleeping Beauty
North of Hekla, scientists keep a close eye on Katla.
Katla's last eruption was 99 years ago in 1918 – the longest dormancy since the 1100s.
Of the last ten eruptions, eight occurred between September and November – when it is thought that the melting of glaciers creates the conditions necessary for magma to break out.
It is this glacial ice – hundreds of meters thick – that most worries the locals.
If such an explosion occurred, the ice covering the volcano would melt, flooding the surrounding areas so severely that the authorities plan to evacuate the entire southern coast of Iceland.
Evgenia Ilyinskaya, a research fellow at the Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics at the University of Leeds, told RUV, the Icelandic national broadcasting service, that the volume of CO2 was significant.
She said: "There must also be an accumulation of magma to release this amount of gas.
"It is well known from other volcanoes, for example in Hawaii and Alaska, that CO2 emissions increase by weeks or years before eruptions.
"It's a clear sign that we have to watch Katla closely. It does nothing, and these results confirm that something is happening. "
Ilyinskaya and his team said new studies were needed to confirm whether the amount of magma was increasing over time.
But another volcanologist, Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, professor of geophysics at the University of Iceland, was more skeptical about fears of eruption.
The teacher argued that more research was needed to determine whether emissions were increasing or normal.
On his Facebook department, he said that Katla could act as an evacuation vent for gases emitted deep into the volcanic belt of southern Iceland and that emissions could also be cyclical, unrelated to unusual activity.
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