INTRODUCTION
Here is a link to English-language weather reports for Iceland (http://en.vedur.is/#tab=spa), and here is a link for the page giving earthquake data ( http://en.vedur.is/#tab=skjalftarhttp://en.vedur.is/#tab=skjalftard), showing where and when small earthquakes happened during that reporting period. Typically, only a sensitive seismograph will know that these small earthquakes ever happened. They happen as the Earth's crust is pulled apart along one of the several fracture or rift zones that underlie the central parts of Iceland.
Happily, Icelandic earthquakes are small and useful in predicting destructive volocanic eruptions. They are not big and massively destructive like earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault Zone in California. Mostly, Icelandic earthquakes tell about small movements in the Earth's crust along a complicated part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an area that just happens to rise above the ocean, giving us Iceland, where we can explore a part of this major geologic feature without needing a deep-diving submarine.
For those that do not already know, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a long, linear zone where the Earth's crust beneath the ocean is being ripped apart because the crust on the west side of this zone is moving westwards, while the crust east of this zone is moving eastwards. As the Earth's crust is very slowly pulled apart, magma (molten rock from deep in the crust) rises along the multitude of fractures, adding to the crust and often forming submarine volcanoes. On Iceland these volcanoes are impressive features that have often contributed quite destructively to human history, with their extensive damage from volcanic ash, lava flows and, especially, from jökullaups (YO-kutl-oyps); the huge, almost instantaneous floods that happen when a volcano under a glacier melts huge amounts of glacial ice, which ultimately breaches its natural dam and produces a catastrophic flood that does great damage to anything and everything downstream. Iceland's glaciers have formed on the tops of some of these volcanoes.
Thanks to a now-extensive network of seismographs, Icelandic geophysicists and geologists can learn well in advance about upward movements of magma, preparatory to a volcanic eruption, well before that volcano actually erupts.
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