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Continued greenhouse gas emissions increase global warming, but could trigger a regional cooling around the North Atlantic. In an open letter released today at the Arctic Circle conference in Reykjavík, Iceland, 44 leading experts on ocean circulation and tipping points from 15 countries appeal to the Nordic Council of Ministers to take this risk seriously, initiate a risk assessment and take steps to minimize this risk as much as possible.

The National Meteorological Institutes of Iceland, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands have joined forces to respond to climate change with more timely weather forecasting on a new, now operational, common supercomputer. This helps prepare each nation for the impacts of weather patterns, which are expected to become more extreme and more challenging to forecast.

Today marks one month since the beginning of the eruption that is ongoing at the Sundhnúkur crater row. The eruption, which began on the evening of March 16, is the fourth in a series of eruptions that started when magma began accumulating beneath Svartsengi in late October 2023.

Yesterday (25 March) a seismic swarm occurred in the NW part of the Askja caldera. About 30 earthquakes were detected between 08.00UTC and midday. The largest earthquake detected had a magnitude M3,5 at a depth of about 5 km. Three earthquakes with magnitudes between M2 and M2,5 were also detected, the rest of the activity was characterized by smaller events. Overall, the seismic activity in the Askja has been quite stable between months and unchanged until yesterday. Looking back, we can see that earthquakes with magnitude above M3 were detected in January 2022 and October 2021.

The weather in 2023 was mostly favorable. It was calm, dry, relatively little snow and stormy days were quite uncommon. However, the year was cooler compared to the most recent years. The average nationwide temperature was 0.1°C colder than the average temperature between 1991 and 2020, and 0.4°C colder than the average temperature of the last ten years. It was relatively coldest in the North, while the Southwest and Southern coast were relatively warmer. The weather was particularly cold in the beginning of the year and again in March. June, on the other hand was exceptionally warm in the North and East. It was the warmest June on record in many places in those regions. The year was relatively dry, with precipitation below average across most of the country. There were several dry periods during the year, such as in March and July, but there were also periods of heavy rain in between. May and June were particularly wet and gloomy in the southern and western regions.