Reykjavík Grapevine - 12.09.2014, Blaðsíða 6
6
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 20116
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 4 — 2014
Volcano | Porn
When the activity began, it was incred-
ible how we could follow the path of
the magma in real-time, simply by ob-
serving the earthquakes as they moved
away from Bárðarbunga. Over the span
of about ten days, a 40 kilometre long
magma dyke (scientist speak for “huge
underground tunnel of melted rock”)
had formed, spanning northeast from a
centrally located volcano called Kverk-
fjöll to, you guessed it, another volcano,
called Askja.
At just past midnight on August 29,
weak signs of increased tremors were
detected by some of the IMO’s seismic
stations and lava was spotted on the
webcams overlooking the area. This was
the beginning of a small effusive erup-
tion (a non-explosive outpour of lava)
in Holuhraun, a 200-year-old lava field
about five kilometres away from the gla-
cial edge. That night
I was woken by a
phone call from my
boss to tell me that
an eruption had be-
gun, but as nobody
was in danger and I
wasn’t immediately
required at the of-
fice I went back to
sleep knowing that
the IMO could prob-
ably use some well-
rested scientists
come morning. It
turned out that erup-
tion only lasted about
four hours, though, so I’d slept through
the whole thing. Andskotans!!
Two days later, though, another effu-
sive eruption started at a similar place but
on a much grander scale, and that’s the
one that is still going on today. The lava
from this eruption now spans an area
of more than 19 square kilometres—for
scale, that’s larger than Vestmannaeyjar
(17 square kilometres) and could cover
most of central Reykjavík (pictured).
How’s it different from
Eyjafjallajökull?
What’s going through most people’s
mind right now is “Why can’t we go see
the eruption? People were allowed to see
the Eyjafjallajökull* eruption, so why not
this one?” The media has been calling it
another beautiful “tourist eruption,” and
they’re kind of right, despite the fact that
an awful lot of bad gases are being emit-
ted. Indeed, it’s a beautiful non-explosive
eruption with no ash fall.
However, the Civil Protection Au-
thority’s main reason
for closing the area to
anyone except scien-
tists (and the press be-
cause they threatened
the Civil Protection
with a lawsuit…) is
the high risk of things
quickly becoming
much worse. This is
an area with a high
risk of floods, and
if another eruption
were to happen un-
der the glacier, there
could be an explosive
event with a lot of
ash fall and catastrophic floods com-
ing straight towards any place from
where you might get a decent view of
the eruption.
The good news is that it’s safe to fly
over the area at the moment, so this erup-
tion isn’t going to stop air traffic for now
(sorry, happy travellers who were hop-
ing not to have to leave the country), and
people are even hiring charter flights to
go and see it. I was lucky enough to go on
one of the Coast Guard’s research flights
over the area and got a great view of the
eruption, so if you can afford it, go for it
(but please don’t try to charter the Coast
Guard’s plane, because we need it).
What’s going to
happen next?
Well, nobody really knows. There are
several different ways that this event
could unfold, but things are so complex
that no outcome is a certainty. We’ve
never seen an eruption exactly like this
one before.
Some of the most likely possibili-
ties are:
• The magma flow could stop, meaning
that there would be no more erup-
tions in the area for now.
• The magma could reach the surface
at different locations outside the
glacier, causing more effusive erup-
tivity similar to the eruption we are
seeing now.
• The Bárðarbunga central volcano
could erupt, which would produce a
flood in Jökulsá á Fjöllum and explo-
sive ash-producing activity similar to
Eyjafjallajökull in 2010. This possibil-
ity is becoming more real to us scien-
tists since the Bárðarbunga caldera
has sunk over 18.5 meters, an amount
never before measured in Iceland.
This could make the caldera far more
vulnerable to eruptive activity.
• The magma could surface elsewhere
under Vatnajökull, causing similar
effects to the previously mentioned
possibility. We’ve seen signs of there
having been small events of this type
under the glacier by observing re-
cently formed depressions in the ice,
but these events have been so small
that they’ve not been able to reach
through the ice or cause any notice-
able flooding.
• There’s also a chance that this could
turn into something that lasts for
years, which is known as a “rifting
episode” (a spreading of the Earth due
to magma inflow). The last rifting epi-
sode we had was the Krafla fires that
started in 1975 and didn’t stop until
1984. These events were composed of
increased seismic activity and erup-
tions from magma tunnels similar to
what we’re seeing now.
We’re monitoring the area extremely
closely and since the onset of the activ-
ity we’ve added a lot of new measuring
equipment in order to help further ex-
amine the risks and possible outcomes.
These events have been a firecracker un-
der our butts to push us into finishing our
work as quickly as possible so that we can
make better models for better predicting
the future. So, now that I’ve used my only
day off work since this all started to write
this article, I’m either going for some
sleep or some red wine before I go back to
keeping watch on Iceland with the rest of
the IMO. Sjáumst and stay safe!!
* It was actually Fimmvörðuháls that was
the pretty tourist eruption. Eyjafjallajökull
was the one that ruined everybody’s holi-
days, but they are usually synonymous in
most people’s minds.
In the middle of the night on Saturday, August 16, an intense swarm of seismic activity began
in the area of Bárðarbunga—one of many central volcanoes nobody can pronounce—under
Europe’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull. Since that day, my co-workers and I at the Icelandic Me-
teorological Office (aka the IMO) have been working day and night to monitor the activity,
holding daily meetings with the Civil Protection services, and trying to figure out the pos-
sible outcomes of these events, which might just be the start of something a lot bigger.
Why You Can't Go
See The Eruption
…and why geologists are
shitting themselves right now!
Words by Hildur María Friðriksdóttir
Photos by Axel Sigurðarson
“This is an area with a
high risk of floods, and
if another eruption were
to happen under the
glacier, there could be
an explosive event with
a lot of ash fall and cata-
strophic floods coming
straight towards any
place from where you
might get a decent view
of the eruption.”
Area of Holuhraun lava flow overlaying a map of Reykjavík