Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula just won’t quit. After sitting dormant for 800 years, it’s now on its fifth eruption since 2021, and locals are treating lava flows like traffic jams—annoying, predictable, and something you plan your commute around.
When Lava Becomes the Neighborhood Nuisance Nobody Asked For
The fishing town of Grindavík has been evacuated more times than anyone’s keeping count. In March 2024, lava swallowed several houses, and by May, another fissure opened up like the earth couldn’t resist one more dramatic flourish. The Icelandic Meteorological Office now issues eruption forecasts the way other countries predict rain. Seismometers detect the magma rising days in advance, giving residents just enough time to grab their cats and laptops before the geological fireworks begin. It’s basically disaster preparedness meets Groundhog Day.
Here’s the thing—this isn’t some freak occurrence.
The entire peninsula sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are ripping apart at roughly 2.5 centimeters per year. That’s about as fast as your fingernails grow, except instead of needing a manicure, you get molten rock fountains shooting 50 meters into the air. The last time Reykjanes went through an eruptive phase was between 1210 and 1240 AD, and it lasted three decades. Scientists think we’re only at the beginning of this current cycle, which means Iceland’s infrastructure planners are in for a very long century.
Mount Etna Keeps Rewriting Its Own Volcanic Resume
Meanwhile, Sicily’s Mount Etna—Europe’s most active volcano and apparently its biggest show-off—has been spewing ash plumes and lava flows with theatrical regularity. In 2021 alone, it had 17 separate paroxysmal episodes, which is volcanologist-speak for “explosive tantrums.” One February eruption sent ash clouds 10 kilometers high, forcing Catania’s airport to close and coating nearby towns in a gritty black snow that ruined laundry lines across the region.
Turns out Etna is growing taller from all this activity.
Its Southeast Crater, previously the shorter sibling among Etna’s four summit craters, has now become the tallest point on the mountain at roughly 3,357 meters. That’s a gain of about 30 meters in just two years, built up from layer upon layer of ejected material hardening into new rock. Volcanoes as construction projects—who knew?
The Underwater Volcano That Broke Tonga and the Internet
January 2022 brought us the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption, which was so absurdly powerful it became the largest atmospheric explosion recorded in the modern era. The blast was equivalent to roughly 100 megatons of TNT—about four times larger than the largest nuclear weapon ever tested. It sent a shockwave that circled the globe multiple times, triggered tsunamis across the Pacific, and injected so much water vapor into the stratosphere that it temporarily warmed the planet. Yes, a volcano made climate change worse for a hot minute. The irony is almost poetic.
Wait—maybe the wildest part wasn’t the explosion itself but what it did to Tonga’s infrastructure. The eruption severed the undersea communications cable connecting the island nation to the rest of the world, leaving 105,000 people digitally stranded for weeks. In 2022, losing your internet connection because a submarine mountain exploded feels like the plot of a bad disaster movie, except it actually happend.
Yellowstone Is Not Going to Kill Us All But Thanks for Asking
Every year, someone rediscovers that Yellowstone is a supervolcano and panics. The caldera last erupted 640,000 years ago, and geologists estimate there’s about a 0.00014% chance of another supereruption in any given year. You’re statistically more likely to be struck by lightning. Twice. In the same day.
That said, Yellowstone is absolutely alive. In December 2023, a swarm of over 400 small earthquakes rattled the region over two weeks—totally normal for a volcanic system that’s constantly shifting and settling. The ground rises and falls by several centimeters annually as magma moves beneath the surface. Steamboat Geyser, the world’s tallest active geyser, has been erupting more frequently since 2018, with 32 eruptions in 2023 alone compared to just three in 2017. Scientists think changes in the underground plumbing system are to blame, not an impending doomsday scenario.
Indonesia’s Volcanic Roulette Wheel Keeps Spinning and Nobody Wins
Indonesia has 127 active volcanoes, more than any other country, and they’re all trying to outdo each other. Mount Semeru, Java’s tallest peak, erupted in December 2023, killing over 50 people and displacing thousands. A month earlier, Mount Marapi in Sumatra erupted without warning, catching hikers on its slopes and leaving at least 23 dead. The problem with Indonesian volcanoes isn’t that they erupt—it’s that millions of people live within their blast zones because volcanic soil is absurdly fertile and people need to eat.
Monitoring helps, but only if you have the resources. The Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation tries to track all 127 volcanoes with a budget that’s laughably inadequate for the task. Some volcanoes get real-time seismic monitoring; others get checked by scientists hiking up with portable equipment every few months. It’s disaster management by triage, and eventually, something slips through the cracks. That’s just math.
