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© AP Photo/Paisley DoddsVik, a small Icelandic town of just 300 people, where residents still recall stories from their relatives of Katla volcano's last eruption in 1918, sits under a blanket of cloud in this Sept. 27, 2011 photo. If Iceland's air-traffic paralyzing volcanic eruption in 2011 seemed catastrophic, just wait for the sequel. That's what many experts are saying as they nervously watch rumblings beneath a much more powerful Icelandic volcano - Katla - which could spew an ash cloud dwarfing eruption that cost airlines $2 billion and drove home how vulnerable modern society is to the whims of nature.
Remember when Eyjafjallajökull, that Icelandic volcano with the impossible name, erupted in spring 2010, disrupting air traffic all over the world and costing airlines and the global economy billions?

Child's play, The Associated Press reported over the weekend, if seismic activity from another Icelandic volcano with a history of nasty tantrums leads to an eruption.

Seismologists in Iceland are wary of an increasing number of small, 3- to 4-magnitude earthquakes under the volcano Katla, whose last eruption in 1918 proved deadly.

That eruption produced a noxious cloud that literally blacked out the sun, killing off crops and livestock, the AP reported.

The 1918 eruption also melted a large sheet of ice covering the volcano, which caused massive flooding, the AP said. If Katla erupts again, the AP reports, it "could prove significantly larger than last year's [eruption], producing a larger ash cloud."

When looking at Katla's history, it appears to be overdue for a major eruption, scientists said, because it typically erupts twice every century.

The AP report says Katla and another of the country's volcanoes, Hekla, could prove problematic for Iceland and perhaps the world in the near future:
Like Katla, Hekla is also overdue for a large eruption and could produce a disruptive and dangerous ash cloud that, in addition to disrupting air travel, could lower overall temperatures across continents by blocking out sunlight for days or weeks.
Iceland's leaders are meeting with scientists and others to develop emergency plans should Katla erupt, the AP reported.

The country's natives are slightly more "nonchalant" about the possible blast, the AP noted, including one man who lives near Katla who said he has been waiting for the volcano to erupt since childhood.

"We've been waiting for it for a long time, and we know that it will come one day," Thorir Kjartansson, a merchant in the town of Vik, told the AP. "Until then, there's no point in worrying about it."

Zane McMillin can be reached through email and Twitter.