Iceland volcano getting very interesting

[dobanion]

Anyone been watching last few days? Looks like it's consolidated to a single fissure (sound familar?) and is going in a episodic dead to some HUGE fountaining.

Huge Lava Fountains Explode From Volcano || ViralHog - YouTube

Live from the volcano in Geldingadalir, seen from Langihryggur, Iceland - YouTube

[MyManao]

Anyone been watching..

Yes, the Icelandic eruption in Geldingadalir is pretty cool.

I sense that it is pau.. or in a pause? And what we are seeing now is driven by gas nucleation throughout the magma column.

In other words, that the force behind/below the magma has been exhausted, but the force created by rapid gas expansion within the magma left in the conduit close to the Earth’s surface is still degassing, and the bubbles it creates breaks the column's surface as bubbles, or bigger bubbles rip the magma/lava apart and it rises with the gas into the atmosphere as tephra, or spatter.

Though, of course, a pause would be way more fun rather than it being pau. But no matter the reason, man those fountains have been beautiful.

Interestingly there is also a new strike, line, of steaming cracks that do not run parallel with the strike of the eruption’s fissures, but cross it, that has been steaming, profusely at times, for the last few days. So, is that evidence of a new dike forming? Or steam/gasses escaping laterally from the vents?

Folks interested in looking.. these are the current webcam URLs…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-RhgB1INII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA-9QzIcr3c
https://k100streymi.mbl.is/p2p/webcam0
https://k100streymi.mbl.is/p2p/webcam1

Further, this is the current data page of the Icelandic Meteorological Office..

https://en.vedur.is/volcanoes/fagradalsf...time-data/

And this is a great time series set of 3D maps that have been made since the eruption began..

https://en.ni.is/resources/publications/...adalsfjall

And this guy has been modeling the earthquakes in 3D as well..

http://baering.github.io/earthquakes/visualization.html

I find that to be a great tool.. though it took some time to get familiar with how to zoom in on the right area at the right pitch...

ETA: When looking through this webcam...

https://k100streymi.mbl.is/p2p/webcam0

This image... 

Image Source... https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/03/18/eldg...utsendingu

with it's lines showing the height, in meters, above the vent..  may help give it some scale, and a sense of just how high the fountains get, their size, the size of the features in the landscape, verses what happens here...

As a side note.. Puu Oo's fountaining, at it's highest, was measured at just about 600 meters (2,000 feet)

[MyManao]

The juxtaposition of Iceland’s current eruption and Kilauea's recent activity is quite the study in contrasts. Not only nature’s but human behavior as well. Especially when one considers that since the current eruption began on March 19 Icelanders have...

Named the eruption site

The site is on private land, and the land owners report receiving a lot of interest from potential commercially minded buyers.

And meanwhile Icelandic law gives people the right to traverse private property in order to enjoy nature. 

As such, the government has created a path, a bulldozed road, that allows for emergency vehicles and more heavy equipment, as well as safe access for tourists to the eruption site.

And now, as the eruption progresses, they are building barriers in the hopes of keeping the flows from going in a particular direction that would impact people. Not so much a community as a highway and some major infrastructure, electric, internet cabling etc.

And all the while, there has been at least four live streaming cameras from various angles sharing the eruption with the world, and their university has published a long series of 3D maps of the entire eruption site.

Their tourist industry is booming. Their pandemic rules for entering the country haven’t been relaxed and still they are swamped. 

All since the middle of March.

Remember the sequence of events here?

Sheesh, talk about contrasts, eh?

And yeah, I remember, our eruption happened in a subdivision, and the residences right to privacy was paramount. But, OMG why in the world is there a subdivision on the rift of an active volcano in the first place? We turned a grand display of nature, the best on Earth, into a disaster. A locked up can’t see it, can’t go to it, can’t share it, disaster because of our ridiculous land use policies and government intervention (HPIA) to prop them up when even the open market won’t support such folly.

And, as to barriers? We were scared out of out minds of the consequences saving Kalapana. Even though a simple berm would have diverted the lava and made the entire area safe from inundation, Kalapana was destroyed. And all the while the scientist that would have engineered such a barrier had a court gag order slapped on him so he couldn’t talk to the public about it. Kapoho? Did we even consider saving Kapoho? And it would have been equally as easy, with that little gap around the North side of Green Mountain being extremely easy to close.

Yep, as I said, quite the study in contrasts..

Btw.. this camera…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA-9QzIcr3c

For the last few days has kept one of the diversion barriers in the lower left corner of its view…

And if you’d like to see images of their barrier.. and closeups of the vent area as well as their road construction.. try looking at this video…

https://grapevine.is/news/2021/05/19/rvk...dalsfjall/

[dobanion]

Continued: Some reports are that the berm "failed." Not quite accurate. The lava expertly diverted around it. We should have a energetic ocean entry within 1-2 weeks.

Looks to be establishing a lava river.

[Durian Fiend]

More interesting. Volcano in Africa. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/world...ation.html