A forty foot high wave moving at 500 mph would hit the West Country and the Solent when a Canary Island volcano called Cumbre Vieja erupts terminally, a scientist has claimed.

Bill McGuire of the London-based Benfield Hazard Research Centre is concerned that the Spanish Government has withdrawn the funding required to monitor the unstable islet.

He says that smaller eruptions from Cumbre Vieja would not cause such apocalyptic shocks, but he also says that the volcano is unstable and that is is ‘certain’ to explode completely in the end.