Toxic sulfurous gas, carrying the telltale reek of rotten eggs, wafts through vents in the steep walls of Iceland's Viti crater, while carbon dioxide bubbles to the surface of the milky blue crater lake. Veils of steam wreathed the landscape of loose rock in eerie half-light. Through this forbidding terrain – 'Viti' is derived from the Icelandic for 'hell'– Michelle Parks, a volcanologist with the Icelandic Meteorological Office, picked her way toward the water's edge one day last August. With a monitor strapped to her hip to warn her if the gases reached dangerous levels, she stooped to submerge a temperature probe in the lake – 26.4 degrees Celsius (79.5 degrees Fahrenheit), consistent with recent readings. Regardless of what the scientists there ultimately find, the interplay between volcanoes and ice will remain a chief worry among volcanologists.
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