A total of 20,000 earthquakes rattling southern Iceland this
week, including the latest addition on Sunday, has alarmed geologists and the Icelandic
Meteorological Office (IMO) as a pending volcanic eruption seems to be on the
cards. The stream of seismic activities began on February 24, with an earthquake
of 5.7 magnitude hitting the Reykjanes Peninsula, located about 32 kilometres
away from the capital city of Reykjavik.

The epicentre of the quake, however, was far enough from
populated areas of the island to have caused any significant damage, as per a
report by LiveScience.

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The following quakes have all been minor, with only two
rising above the magnitude of 5.0 on the Richter scale.

Reports of the latest tremor was tweeted out by independent
scientific organisation EMSC on Sunday.

“Felt #earthquake (#jarðskjálfti) M3.6 strikes 32 km SW of
#Reykjavík (#Iceland) 39 min ago …”, the tweet read.

To highlight the frequency of the quakes, Thorvaldur
Thordarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland, was quoted
by LiveScience as saying to the New York Times that many residents have been “waking
up with an earthquake, others [going] to sleep with an earthquake,”.

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Such swarms of seismic tremors have previously been
associated with volcanic eruptions in the southern part of the country.

The IMO was further stated as saying that the boundary of
the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates was likely point of origin of the
quakes, which in turn could fuel the active volcanoes located in the Reykjanes
Peninsula into eruption.