For every person that is interested in volcanoes and complex geology, Iceland is probably something special. A unique place where the MAR intersects a mantle plume, or vice-versa. A beautiful island filled with powerful volcanoes and other complex volcanic and hydrothermal features. All in one nice little spot. Of the entire Icelandic volcanic lot, the most…
I had planned the third part be an extension of how the sinusoidal 3D-wedge model influenced eruptions over time and how it explains distal eruptions along the fissure swarm. But, there has been a wealth of questions and comments that I felt needed to be answered that do not belong to the article series itself,…
Where the blood flows calm like a purling river Late March, a few minor earthquakes happened in the sleeping heart of Iceland. They were hardly worth noting, at M1, and 4-5 km deep. The centre of Iceland is far from anywhere. It is calm and is hard to reach, thus receives little attention and fewer…
In physics, there is a famous tenement that reads as, ‘cause and effect’. But, for Hekla I find that the founding principle of the Bauhaus school of modernist architecture is far better suited to express what I will be trying to model and express here. It states that the form of a building will at…
The point of this series of articles is to propose an alternative model of dynamics, driving forces and magma fractionation at Hekla. It is thus not utilizing the standard volcanological model of how a mantleplume stratovolcano function. 5 years ago, I started to have grave misgivings about how we interpret and model Hekla, as such…
I had intended to write either an angry op-ed, or a piece about Guatemalan volcanism. But, as usual Iceland had to butt in and grab the attention, so here we go (again). Seismic unrest at Herðubreið Before I write about what has happened in the last few days and about what is going to happen…
A little while ago there was a short interview published with Professor in geophysics, Páll Einarsson. In the interview it seemed like he was stating that Bárdarbunga, Grimsvötn, Hekla and Katla all were preparing to erupt shortly. First of all let me state that I deeply respect Páll as a geophysicist, problem is just that…
Being considered the world leading authority on something is probably more of a curse than a blessing. All of a sudden you have a reputation to defend and everyone will be annoyed with you when you do not agree with their interpretation about what is happening. To top it off there will be a not…
Why on earth am I using the term ”debunked” about a piece of equipment that is used by scientists across the globe? The answer is quite simple, it is when laymen start interpreting them that they are overused, or used in ways they were never intended. And this causes a plethora of faulty reasoning and…
Icelandic volcanoes are all about long term projections. They do not do things in the short run, before any eruptions you will see either several intrusive episodes like at Eyjafjallajökull, or you will see signs of steadily mounting pressure prior to an eruption. For some Icelandic volcanoes these two processes goes on for decades, or…