No, Katla is not about to blow her top, and no, this Icelandic volcano is not about to shut down European airspace; although you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise if you had seen the hyperventilating headlines in the British press last month. The real story is far more intriguing.

Evgenia Ilyinskaya, a volcanologist at the University of Leeds, and her colleagues have discovered that Katla is pumping out vast quantities of carbon dioxide. Gas measurements taken above the ice-capped volcano (using aircraft), combined with modelling, reveal that Katla is one of the biggest volcanic sources of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), releasing about 20,000 tonnes every day – approximately 1% of the UK’s daily CO 2 emissions.

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