A fissure in a street close to the city of Grindavík, Iceland
Brynjar Gunnarsson/AP / Alamy Inventory Photograph
Iceland is bracing for a volcanic eruption, as thousands of small earthquakes have shaken the southern a part of the Reykjanes peninsula since October. The earthquakes had been attributable to an enormous quantity of magma from deep inside Earth shifting upwards and forming a 15-kilometre-long crack between 2 and 5 kilometres underground. As of 12:30pm GMT on 15 November, no volcanic eruption had begun.
When will the volcanic eruption happen?
Nobody is aware of. It’s thought seemingly that an eruption will happen, however it isn’t sure. The mass of magma may stay the place it’s and regularly cool slightly than erupting.
However I noticed movies of an eruption on social media?
These are movies of previous volcanic eruptions, resembling of the Fagradalsfjall volcano that erupted in 2021, 2022 and July 2023. The Fagradalsfjall volcano is close to the brand new magma intrusion however is separate from it.
Why is the bottom cracking?
The magma intrusion has pushed the land on both facet outwards and up, inflicting the bottom instantly above the intrusion to sink up to a metre in places. This has resulted in cracks within the floor, inflicting a whole lot of harm within the coastal city of Grindavík, whose north-western edge is directly above the magma tunnel.
What’s in danger within the area?
The magma intrusion runs from simply off the coast, passes underneath Grindavík and continues inland to inside a few kilometres of a geothermal power plant called Svartsengi. The recent water from Svartsengi is the supply for the Blue Lagoon spa close by, one in all Iceland’s largest vacationer sights.
What’s taking place there now?
The 3000 residents of Grindavík have been evacuated, however they had been allowed again briefly to gather belongings, pets and livestock. The Blue Lagoon is closed.
Fagradalsfjall volcano spews lava after an eruption on 26 July 2023
Emin Yogurtcuoglu/Anadolu Company/Getty
What would occur if there’s an eruption?
Nobody could be certain. It’s seemingly that a fissure vent may type, with a fountain of lava producing a lava move. “It kind of unzips, letting out magma in a long fissure,” says Evgenia Ilyinskaya on the College of Leeds, UK, who’s in Iceland monitoring the location. “We don’t see necessarily a large, pyramid-shaped stratovolcano.”
How a lot destruction this causes relies on the place it occurs and the way a lot lava comes out. If rising lava meets giant quantities of groundwater, or the eruption happens underneath the ocean, there may very well be an explosive eruption because of the formation of steam. “If we are lucky, we will get mostly eruptions within uninhabited valleys like we had in 2021 and 2022 and earlier this year,” says Ilyinskaya.
Can something be executed to guard the city?
Up to now, Iceland has generally built earthen “dams” to deflect lava flows and defend key infrastructure, together with on the Reykjanes peninsula. Nonetheless, the magma chamber stretches for 15 kilometres on this case, and it isn’t clear the place or if lava will begin to move.
Throughout a 1973 eruption that threatened to dam a harbour, seawater was sprayed on a lava move to sluggish it down, says Ilyinskaya. “Actually that was really successful.”
Will an eruption disrupt transatlantic flights?
The basalt eruptions that happen on the Reykjanes peninsula seldom produce a lot ash, so it’s unlikely we are going to see an impression like that of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010. “This could cause some short-lived disruption to local air traffic,” says Ilyinskaya. “But it is pretty certain there’s not going to be a lot of disruption to air traffic across the world like in 2010.”
Why have there been so many eruptions on this space not too long ago?
On this a part of Iceland, the volcanoes all appear to erupt across the similar time each thousand years or so, in cycles known as Reykjanes Fires, says Ilyinskaya. The final time this occurred was round 800 years in the past. “Now it’s pretty clear we are in this very active cycle again. We could be going into these kind of eruptions for the rest of our lifetimes,” she says. “Luckily, the eruptions that do happen in these [Reykjanes] Fires are all quite small.”
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