Indonesia-style TSUNAMIS could head towards UK and US when Canary Islands volcano erupts

Professor Stephen Sparks, based at the University of Bristol, made the revelation about Cumbre Vieja, a very active volcano on the island of La Palma, adjacent to the popular holiday destination of Tenerife. He explained to Express Online: “When you have volcanic islands sticking out of the sea, they’re very unstable. And, in some cases, you can get gigantic landslides when part of the island essentially collapses into the sea.

“And you can get tsunamis from that and they’re quite significant.

“In neighbouring islands they could be enormous.

“It’s quite difficult to know how dramatic these tsunamis would be around the Atlantic Ocean – on the east coast of the USA or Europe.

“I mean they could be quite significant.

“Why it’s difficult to know is: if you have a bath and you create a wave by pushing the water from one end of the bath to the other with your hand, if you push it quickly you’re going to get a larger wave than if you push it slowly.

“The problem is, we don’t really know enough about how rapidly these islands collapse into the sea.

“If they collapse relatively slowly then you won’t get a big wave.

“But if they collapse very fast, then maybe you do get a really big wave.”

Cumbre Vieja means old summit in Spanish.

It has erupted twice in living memory – in 1949 and 1971 – and over the past 12 months there have been well over a thousand recorded tremors on the island, 928 of them in just one week this February.

A large eruption could mean the island ceases to exist – along with swathes of southern English coast.

Scientists say Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau volcano island, which erupted and collapsed a week ago triggering a deadly tsunami, is now only about a quarter of its pre-eruption size.

The explosion on the 22nd December caused a tsunami that hit Sumatra and Java where more than 420 people died and 40,000 were displaced.