Lead researcher slams news reports as “scaremongering”

The potential eruption of Icelandic volcano Katla and its effect on Irish air travel is erroneously being likened to the 2010 eruption of other Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull.

Evgenia Ilyinskaya, the lead author of a newly published study involving Icelandic volcano Katla, has slammed recent news reports that Katla poses both an immediate threat and similar effect as Eyjafjallajökull as untrue.

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In 2010, the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull caused mayhem for Irish air travel when tens of thousands of flights were grounded for days. Major disruptions were felt all around the world as European airports waited for the ash cloud to subside.

In Ilyinskaya’s recently published study, she and her team focused on the emissions of CO2 from Katla, which are higher than originally thought. 

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Ilyinskaya took to Twitter to clarify on her research and share her "disappointment" in the spread of misinformation.

In particular, she called out The Sunday Foreign Times for misquoting her after she provided them with an interview.

Naming and shaming this scaremongering article. I said explicitly that we are in no position to say whether or not #Katla #volcano is ready to erupt; and that air traffic disruption in case of an #eruption is unlikely to be as serious as in 2010. You are lying to your readers https://t.co/zyE5hFQQDb

— Evgenia Ilyinskaya (@EIlyinskaya) September 23, 2018

"Say no to fake news," she concludes in her tweets.

Sarah Barsotti, a volcanic hazards coordinator at the Icelandic Met Office, also clarified by saying “there is no way of telling when it will erupt, just that it will.”

While Katla will erupt at some point, it’s due date and scope, like many other volcanoes, is as yet unknown.