A team of researchers from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, led by Professor Bob White, Fellow of St Edmund’s College and Director of The Faraday Institute, have recently returned from Iceland where they gathered the most extensive dataset ever from a volcanic eruption. This dataset will likely yield considerable new insights into how molten rock moves underground, and whether or not it erupts.

The team has been monitoring activity near the Bárðarbunga and Holuhraun volcanoes since 2006, using up to 70 broadband seismometers.

Luckily, the seismometers and field researchers were still in Iceland at the time that this most recent volcanic activity began, as the team had recently finished recovering 25 seismometers from the Vatnajökull ice cap where they had been used for a study of small quakes caused by ice cracking.

To read more about the study and for a video in which Professor Bob White and PhD student Tim Greenfield discuss their work, and what it’s like to be up close to such a spectacular eruption, please click here.