Thousands of earthquakes recorded as consultants reveals website of eruption
- Iceland has skilled 2000 mini-quakes within the final 24 hours
- The eruption is anticipated to happen within the mountainous Hagafell area
Iceland consider they’ve pinpointed the doubtless website of a serious volcanic eruption after nearly 2000 mini-quakes had been recorded within the final 24 hours.
The Icelandic Met Office have warned that Hagafell is the ‘prime location for an eruption’, after magmatic fuel was detected at a borehole in Svartsengi which consultants say is a sign that an eruption is imminent.
4000 residents have already been evacuated from the close by city of Grindavik after the state of emergency was declared with the excessive risk that they are going to by no means return.
Volcanologist Haraldur Sigurðsson has mentioned that if an eruption had been to occur, he expects that it may erupt into the ocean and that Grindavik would must be ‘reorganised’.
Pictured: Map exhibiting the magma that was found final Friday coursing into the bottom and fracturing rock over a nine-mile distance
Iceland is a specific hotspot for seismic exercise as a result of it sits on a tectonic plate boundary referred to as the Mid Atlantic Ridge
Pictured: The city of Grindavik the place a gaping crack has opened up subsequent to a kids’s play floor
Pictured: A Member of the Coast Guard boards a helicopter at an space close to the evacuated city of Grindavik on November 17
‘I’m additionally anxious in regards to the port. It would not take a lot to destroy this port, fill it with lava,’ Haraldur advised Iceland’s Morgunblaðið (MBL) newspaper.
‘There are each cracks there within the harbour and even when the magma comes up someplace outdoors, it flows into the harbour, as a result of that is the despair.
‘So, within the massive image, this city must be fully reorganised,’ he added.
The Reykjanes peninsula didn’t skilled an eruption for eight centuries till 2021.
Since then, three eruptions have struck – all in distant uninhabited areas – and volcanologists consider this can be the beginning of a brand new period of exercise within the area.
One lifelong resident of Grindavik Eythor Reynisson mentioned: ‘There are going to be lots of people who do not wish to go there. My mom mentioned ‘I by no means wish to go there once more.”
Grindavik is a town of arpund 4000 is about 31 miles southwest of the capital, Reykjavik
Pictured: Grindavik, a fishing town that relies heavily on its port operations
As a precaution for domestic and international air travel, the volcanic aviation colour code for the Reykjanes Peninsula has been elevated to orange (heightened unrest)
Senior Lecturer in Earth Sciences at the University of Manchester, Margaret Hartley said an eruption was a case of when, not if.
‘I do think an eruption will take place, but the big question is when that might happen.
‘The most likely way to create this fracture is that a pressure build-up of gas bubbles in the dike will force magma towards the surface, breaking the crust apart,’ she said.
‘The process is a bit like shaking up a can of fizzy drink – as soon as a crack opens in the top of the can, the drink escapes with lots of frothing.’
Scientists revealed to MailOnline how massive this eruption might be and whether or not it’s going to rival Eyjafjallajokull, which noticed 50,000 flights cancelled and eight million passengers affected.
It led to the biggest global aviation shutdown since World War II.
Iceland is a particular hotspot for seismic activity because it sits on a tectonic plate boundary called the Mid Atlantic Ridge.
The Mid Atlantic Ridge is a protracted chain of mountains that stretches down the Atlantic ocean, which means most of those mountains are underground. It’s regularly pushing North America and Eurasia away from one another.
Iceland is also located over a mantle plume – a column of hot, molten rock that rises from the deep mantle to the surface, becoming lava when it erupts.
A member of search and rescue team jumps over the crack in a road in the fishing town of Grindavik, which was evacuated due to volcanic activity, in Iceland November 15
General view of the town of Grindavik, which was evacuated due to volcanic activity, in Iceland
Grindavik has become lined with massive cracks in the land that are billowing out steam
Evacuated residents have been returning to the town each day to collect belongings, but had to flee on Tuesday after the Met Office said its meters had detected sulphur dioxide.
In the past week, Grindavik has become lined with massive cracks in the land that are billowing out steam – the result of magma moving underground that pushes up on the Earth’s crust.
Last Friday Iceland’s Met Office (IMO) discovered that magma was coursing into the ground and fracturing rock over a nine-mile distance.
IMO’s Matthew Roberts said the magma cut through the ground beneath Grindavik ‘almost like an underground freight train.’ Images have since shown fissures appearing in the ground, and further damage to buildings and roads is expected.
Western parts of Grindavik have also sunk into the ground.
Haraldur said that it is now clear that the peninsula has awoken, and can now be considered an active volcanic belt.
So far nobody has been killed.
How a volcanic eruption in 2010 sparked almost a month of chaos for European air travel
A volcanic eruption in Iceland in 2010 sparked the worst air travel disruption since the Second World War.
Chaos descended within the European travel industry when an unfortunate series of phenomenons combined from a number of relatively small volcanic events at Eyjafjallajokull, on the south side of the island.
Seismic activity had started at the end of 2009 and had intensified up until March 20, when the volcano – which is covered by an ice cap – finally erupted.
The eruption was small – just one out of seven on the scale used to measure eruptions. Globally, it appeared a relatively small event at the time.
But around five days later, scientists began to notice unusual activity.
They found evidence at magma was flowing from underneath the crust into Eyjafjallajokull’s magma chamber and that pressure stemming from the process caused a huge crustal displacement.
While the eruption began as an effusive eruption – where lava runs from the volcano along the ground – the volcano then entered an explosive stage on April 14. This time, the explosion was measured as a four on the volcanic scale
Meanwhile, ice surrounding the volcano started melting and began flooding into the volcano.
This rapid cooling caused the magma to shear into fine and jagged ash particles. It also increased the volcano’s explosive power.
While the eruption began as an effusive eruption – where lava runs from the volcano along the ground – the volcano then entered an explosive stage on April 14. This time, the explosion was measured as a four on the volcanic scale.
A huge ash cloud was fired into the air, reaching up to nine kilometres in height. Around 250 million cubic metres of volcanic material was also spewed into the air as a result of the explosion.
To make matters worse, the volcano was directly under a jet stream and the rapid cooling from the ice water gave the volcano enough power to shoot the ash directly into it.
The jet stream was also unusually stable at the time and sent ash particles from the volcano continuously southeast – towards Europe.
From April 14-20, ash from the volcanic eruption covered large areas of Northern Europe.
About 20 countries closed their airspace to commercial jet traffic and it affected approximately 10 million travellers, with nearly 100,000 flights to and from and within Europe cancelled across the six day period.
The Airport Operators Association (AOA) estimated that airports lost £80 million over the six-and-a-half days, while the knock-on disruption lasted for around a month.
In the United Kingdom alone thirteen travel firms collapsed during the summer of 2010. The ash cloud disruption was cited as one of the contributing factors.
A huge ash cloud was fired into the air, reaching up to nine kilometres in height. Around 250 million cubic metres of volcanic material was also spewed into the air as a result of the explosion
Several sports matches were postponed, while Liverpool football club had to travel by coach to Madrid in order to play a match in the Europa League.
While the travel disruption mostly ran throughout April, volcanic activity continued at Eyjafjallajokull until October, when scientists declared the eruption was over.
In 2011, a volcano under the Vatnajökull glacier sent thousands of tonnes of ash into the sky in a few days, raising concerns of a repeat of the travel chaos seen across northern Europe.
Though the explosion was larger than Eyjafjallajokull, the impact was not as wide-spread.
A total of 900 flights (out of 90,000 in Europe) were cancelled as a result of the eruption in the period May 23-25.
In 2014, Bárðarbunga erupted in what was the biggest eruption in Iceland in more than 200 years. However, only local travel was impacted as a result.
