Columbia flood basalt. Copyright Marli Miller, https://geologypics.com, educational, non-commercial usage
Greetings. This article has a long history of not being written. It originated a few years ago when the 2018 lower Puna eruption was on going. Before I start, let me vent. IN MY OPINION, there is no such thing as a “Supervolcano”. That term was popularised by the BBC for their disaster movie of the same name, released in 2005. Oddly, Wikipedia nails it. “It is based on the speculated and potential eruption of the volcanic Yellowstone Caldera” (bold added). As far as entertainment value, it’s passable (sort of)… as volcano disaster movies go, it beats ‘Dante’s Peak’ where a pickup truck crashing into a cave can save you from a pyroclastic flow! (Not to mention Cris Pratt and the dinosaurs outpacing one in a Jurassic World movie) -> not his fault, he just does the acting.
The term ‘supervolcano’ doesn’t even have a definition that can be tested. Amazingly, it was first used for the Three Sisters! At one time in the early 1900’s it was proposed that the Three Sisters were one volcano. This was proven wrong in the mid-1900’s, and in a discussion of this proof, the term ‘super’volcano was first used – to describe something that did not exist! Like ‘Big Bang’, it was a term coined to sound silly.
Later (much later) the word ‘supereruption’ became in use for VEI-8 eruptions, and after that a ‘supervolcano’ was one capable of a ‘supereruption’. That is not helpful either. To know it is capable it should have done one. But a supereruption obliterates the original volcano and leaves a very large hole in the ground – a caldera. Are the myriad large calderas of Hokkaido supervolcanoes? How about the collection of large calderas on Rabul? The three calderas of the Los Frailes volcanic complex in southern Spain? See https://www.usgs.gov/news/a-personal-commentary-why-i-dislike-term-supervolcano-and-what-we-should-be-saying-instead who argue that ‘supereruption’ is definable, but ‘supervolcano’ is not. That comes from YVO, so they should know!
A more accurate term is “Large Caldera Eruption”. With that term, all an eruption has to do is be in the upper half of caldera forming eruptions. A good reference would be the table of data compiled by Dr Peter L Ward that documents pretty near every major eruption for the past few million years. Find the size of the listed calderas, and the upper half of the size would be the large calderas. Spoiler alert, there are a lot more than you would expect. A clue for the doom mongers…. Yellowstone is not currently erupting, nor does it seem to be in a run up phase to do so. Tondano, a large caldera system in Indonesia, has frequent eruptions yet the doom mongers never seem to notice.
To quote Carl le Strange from a previous incarnation of VolcanoCafe:
“Some volcanoes just can’t catch a break. Imagine for a little while that you are a bona-fidé supervolcano. You are the largest of your type on the planet, you are highly active, and by gosh you have shown what you are capable of. In a perfect world your 20 by 30 km caldera explosion should have put the world into awe, and the 1,000 cubic kilometer of DRE you ejected in the form of pumacious tuff covers an entire sub-continent. Yep, you really did reach the small highly exclusive club of VEI-8 volcanoes. You smirk at your little sibling Monte Somma’s antics with Vesuvius. Your Vesuvius-style event left a 3.5 by 5 km God honest caldera on its own. To top it off you have a huge underground reservoir of liquid acid that would seriously alter the planets weather if you felt like discharging it. You are also perfectly located to have a maximum kill ratio. So, you wake up and stretch your arms and start a double eruption from two different sub-volcanoes just to celebrate the new day. You have your largest eruption in recorded history. Then you look around to see the fearful faces of the residents as they offer up motorcycles in your name, you expect volcanologists doing somersaults as they play lip banjo, and literally thousands of blog pages glorifying your power and shear awesomeness. What do you find? Yawning people and a cockerel trying to wake up a pig sty. You find that for being an erupting supervolcano you are a massive PR failure. One single small earthquake at Yellowstone outperforms you in publicity.” (September 27, 2012).
And yes, as large calderas go, Tondano is MASSIVE. But that is not why I’m writing this.
Source: USGS. The extent of the Columbia River Basalt group. https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/cvo/columbia-river-basalt-group-stretches-oregon-idaho
I have long had an interest in the Columbia flood basalts. This is a young flood basalt which covers Washington, Oregon and bits of Idaho and Nevada – making it a ‘small’ flood basalt. It erupted 16 million years ago, over a period of about 1 million years. The oldest part is at Steens mountain, at the southern end of the Columbia flood basalt. This is also near the start of the hot spot trail that left seven volcanic fields with large calderas, starting at McDermitt (16.5 million years ago) and stretching all over Idaho before ending (?) at Yellowstone (2 million years ago). Where did the hot spot come from? The trail prior to 16 million years has not just gone cold, it isn’t there. And how did a flood basalt morph into an explosive large caldera trail?
My original thinking was that the magma upwelling behind the detaching Farallon Plate after it’s full subduction had caused it. There is a high probability that that was wrong. My current thinking, based on several videos by Nick Zenter (the chalk board guy at Central Washington University), is that the Yellowstone hot spot used to be the nexus of an island, not dissimilar to Iceland, that subducted/accreted and eventually tracked to it’s current location. Whether it was part of an island chain or a ribbon continent depends on what paper you read. Accreted terrane is accreted terrane. Through petrological analysis of the accreted complexes it is evident that several sequences have been plastered onto the North American craton. Zircon analysis show that some sources originated from the west as well as the east.
While watching some of Zentner’s videos, I learned of an isotropic characteristic that tells whether a magma erupted through an accretionary complex, or through a craton. Essentially, the Strontium 0.706 line denotes the boundary of the North American Craton. This is the line where the 87Sr/86Sr ratio changes from below to above this value: the higher values are found where there is continental crust. (It is the green line in the plot, derived from multiple sources, principally USGS data.) It is in effect where North America ends and the accreted terranes begin. Notice that the Large Caldera events did not begin until the hotspot had passed under the North American craton, with all of it’s continental sticky silica. Steens Mountain, linked to the Columbia Flood basalts, is on the other side.
(There is disagreement whether this line is the edge of the North American craton or of continental crust in general. But that is not the main point. It shows where there is mainly oceanic crust or mainly continental crust regardless of their precise origin.)
Something interesting happens when you look at the 4.5 km geothermal potential;
Take a look near Redding California. South of there is the Mendicino National forest. Coincidentally, near there is the Mendicino triple junction, the northern end of the San Andreas strike-slip fault. What else is at or near Mendicino? (From a quick Google search) “The Geysers is the world’s largest geothermal field, containing a complex of 18 geothermal power plants, drawing steam from more than 350 wells.” Strangely enough, that bar of elevated geothermal potential seems to point at the well known track of the Yellowstone hot spot. From my previous plotting frenzy during the lower Puna eruption, I estimated the Yellowstone hotspot as being located just off the coast of California/Oregon area about 30 million years ago. This fits with other work I have seen by actual geologists. I attempted to recreate that plot for this article, but failed spectacularly. I didn’t have time to back out the relative plate motions since then. (Either way, my calculations were off by an easy 1% in distance alone and my bearing calculations were horrendous.)
After watching a series of Nick Zentner’s videos, I have come to the conclusion that the Yellowstone hot spot, at one time was the forming mechanism of an island not unlike Iceland. Zentner relates three possible ideas of what collided with the North American craton. They range from an island chain, to a super terrane, somewhat continental in nature. Continents can be quite diminutive. New Zealand is a good example. “Zealandia” is a proposed submerged continent with only New Zealand itself still above water. Palawan Island in the Philippines is a crustal shard that detached from Asia quite some time ago. Mindoro Island being the eastern end that is currently smashing into the Philippines near the mobile belt. (See my “Sleeper Fish” article on VC from years ago). Other things that come up in Zentner’s videos is that multiple subduction zones and terranes have accumulated, building Washington State and Oregon much like an encrustation of bugs on a windshield… complete with carbonate platforms from ex reef system when the islands were bopping around out in the south pacific. The “Baja BC” idea stems from palaeomagnetic evidence that shows many of Washington State and Oregon’s plutons and rock structures originated as much as 3000 miles south of their current latitude. (Hence the “Baja” part of the term)
My contention is that SOMETHING… sort of a cross between Iceland and the Philippines, impacted the North American craton. I say Philippines because it currently has both eastward and westward subduction occurring on either side and serves as a good example of you can have both forms of subduction on an island chain. Siletzia, or the previous terranes, (Insular etc.) existed as a hotspot driven island/continent at the focus of at least one spreading center with other crustal boundaries attached. The long departed Kula plate was likely the northern plate of that spreading center. What other hot spot sits in a spreading center? Iceland.
My apologies for harping on the Philippine example. I have been a bit obsessed by the battle of Samar Island, the location of probably the stupidest tactical blunder I have ever heard of. {Not really Admiral Kurita’s fault, he was inundated by the details of conflicting information from the fog of war. He made his decisions based on mission guidelines handed down to him by bureaucrats and what he had at hand for intelligence… plus what he could see for himself}
It turns out that similar ideas to mine had already been proposed. Siletzia accreted on western America around 50 million years ago. It still forms the west side, extending underneath part of the Cascades. After accreting, the terrane rotated by 75 degrees. It has made things rather complicated. Siletzia is a flood basalt, older than the Columbia basalt and also much larger. It is dated to 50-55 million years ago. The suggestion has been made that it was formed at the Kula-Fallaron spreading ridge and that the Yellowstone hot spot was at the right place at the right time. This was the original Iceland (or at least a subtropical version), which 8 million years later was plastered onto America. See Wells et al 2014.
From Wells et al., 2014: accretion of Siletiza and Yakutat (Y). YHS indicates the possible locations of the Yellowstone hot spot
The Columbia flood basalt still needs an explanation. One suggestion (Wells) is that the hot spot was reactivated by slab rollback, and melted through the Siletzia basalt. But the main point made here is that shortly after, the Yellowstone hot spot entered the area of the old continental plate and that this started the sequence of large caldera eruptions.
Getting away from that, in Idaho, north of the Yellowstone HS track, is a mining district that produces ample silver and gold from the mineralization of emplaced plutons. These are likely the result of the YHP pushing magma up that never actually erupted. The mineralization following a process similar to the Los Frailes caldera systems of southern Spain (not quite as stupendous as Yellowstone, but large calderas unto themselves.) A USGS article on the topic.
How all of this relates to the formation of the Rocky Mountains and the formation of the Basin and Range province I’ll leave up to Mr Zentner’s videos. My advice is to load up on coffee and clear your schedule for an afternoon or so. They are fascinating.
One final item. The Philippines is claimed by Wikipedia to encompass around 120,000 sq miles of land. Washington State – 66,544 sq miles, Oregon – 95,997 sq miles. So whatever actually collided (or was run over by North America) was just a bit larger than the Philippines, possibly even twice that size since much of it is splattered across British Columbia and up into Alaska. Something else to consider. Some theropods were enormous. The first ACTUAL dinosaur bone found in Washington state was on an island near Vancouver. In my book, that goes a long way in calling the colliding land mass a small continent… unless dinosaurs similar to T-Rex were adept open ocean swimmers.
If you wish to study this further, I recommend Nick Zentner’s collection of references on Baja BC.
For his videos: Eocene A to Z is quite informative.
By the way, when it comes to the idea that Yellowstone is over due… in my opinion that is “bovine excrement.” Look at the time periods of the known Yellowstone originated large caldera events, you get a “due” date period of about 3.54 to 2.97 million years at the 90% confidence interval. At best you will get yet ANOTHER caldera infill event as the caldera floor gets paved over. If you don’t have a good lid on the pot, you are not going to get over pressurization. Maar style eruptions? Yes, that is possible. West Thumb is one such feature in Yellowstone lake. And as you know, volcanoes tend to erupt in a similar manner as they have previously done. Years ago, I tracked one collection of seismic events NE through Yellowstone lake up towards “Fishing Bridge.” I believe underwater surveys found pillow lavas down there some time before that. For those that don’t know, the “moon-bat” community was frantic that we were all going to die. I know because I was reading many of their discussion forums.
I have been advised to write a closing statement. This is difficult to do. I have the unfortunate characteristic of not being able to shut up once I have made my point. The best that I can do is to tell you that there is a huge amount of stuff that is far more entertaining than what you find on the TV. You just have to dig around on the internet to find the relevant papers. Some of what I did not address is the La Garita caldera in Colorado. My initial feel is that it was formed due to decompression melt from the crinkling of the North American craton as the various terranes accreted. Additionally, how did the Meteor hotspot get on the other side of the Atlantic spreading center? It has been implicated at reactivating the Reelfoot Rift, a precambrian weakness that was in competition at becoming the Atlantic Basin when it opened up about 200 myr ago. Back during the Atlantic Basin’s early life is when the Canary Islands began forming. They sit on top of phyllite. Metamorphed basin sediment. (The white part of the “floaters” from La Restinga pumice).
In short, if you have a question about geophysical processes. The data is out there, all you have to do is go find it. If we can’t answer it here, someone has probably already written a paper on the topic.
Many thanks to Albert for kicking me in the arse to get up and actually write this article that I have had rolling around in the back of my head for years. Additionally, he helped smooth out some of my disjointed thoughts on the matter.
Geolurking, July 2023
16:05:52 south exit sputtering (or is it that gopher digging again?) 😉
Just Bill Murray at it again.
https://youtu.be/U0Hx5ka1FiA
Projectile vomiting.
Looks like the lava has accumulated too fast and left molten pockets within the growing shield. This happened a lot in Hawaii in 2007, where breakouts on a tube would build lava ponds and shields, which often collapsed into fast moving lava flows. Those shields were rootless structures not real vents but the difference is pretty arbitrary in this context.
My guess is lava is also intruding into that side seeing as it is probably not fully solid, and is breaking out. So it is a bit of a question if these are properly considered as true vents or not. But we should expect many more of them. Question is when one is going to form on the far side, which is now significantly lower down even if that side is thicker.
To be honest, I would not be too surprised to see new fissures open soon, just from the weight of that lava lake, although a more passive shallow failure of one of the flanks is more likely in the near term
I think the amount of lava coming from them is a bit to large for them to be stagnant pools left over from old flows.
Some of them have been producing large flows for the whole day now and the most recent is producing a flow that’s about as large in volume as as the others. So they probably are directly fed from the main vent.
I more mean that the lava field not being solid yet is allowing these breakouts to happen more easily. Although dont necessarily underestimate the size of the pockets in the lava field too, they can be pretty big. The best indicator is probably that the flow lasts for a while, the breakouts are short lived.
The lava is amazingly fluid in the vent, its splashing and jumping vildly and waves wash the inner walls leaving thin glowing veeners ( color is not perfect in the webcam ) the lava pond is quite smooth too
Yet as soon as the lava leaves the vent it takes on a rough Aa y apparence in the channels seems to have difficult to form pahoehoe channels.. is this because of high crystal content ? In Hawaii it woud be smooth and shiney everywhere close to the vent
Is the volcano going to build a magma chamber and how would we notice this?
16:04:48 Another “uncorking”: lava starts spurting from the outlet at the SE base of the cone, and the rate of efflux from other spots increases, especially the one E of the cone which develops a dome fountain for a while. The level of lava inside the cone begins to drop.
16:23:45 A major domino sequence of crust overturnings immediately SW of the cone, slow until about 16:24:30 and then accelerating, lasting about 2 minutes.in total.
I see the ‘Uglies’ are back on the cam in force today. Ugly minds that just wish to upset cam viewers. I am begining to wish they just ban all tourists and only allow Icelanders to visit as they appear to have far better manners than tourists.
From now on I shall just watch Driffelshraun camera. That appears to be unreachable to tourists,
Much better for my blood pressure.
We just had some of the outside of the cone fall off. This is in line with the vent in the wall on the south side. Maybe a little coming out. There is some venting from the hole just above it.
17:15 ish 7/23
Mac
17:21:20 The start of over 12 minutes of systematic foundering and replacement of the crust west of the cone. It propagates southwest along the southeast border for a while but at 17:29 most of the rest of the surface starts breaking up all at once with huge glowing cracks developing.
The lava arms are growing like an octupus in many directions from the lava “head”. Humans have to take care for the many arms which may quickly hunt careless tourists …
The lava lake in the crater is interesting: It has no balance like “classical lava lakes”, but only magmatic inflow and lava outflow. There is no backflow of magma into the dyke/magma chamber. The crater with the lava lake looks a bit like a fiery magic potion pot.
Double, double
Toil and trouble
Fire burn and
Cauldron bubble …
Haha the witches song. I keep wondering where the cauldron will crack next. Possibly where the smoke that has been going for hours on the rim and which has now become very thick and white. Something must give soon.
18:35 tandem dust devils.
A bit before 18:45 there’s a brief but substantial crust overturn a short distance SW of the cone.
Two idiots have parked themselves directly in front of the camera and are refusing to move. How do I force them to move?
They seem to have moved off now.
But I am beginning to understand why they used to toss virgins in volcanos.
Re: “But I am beginning to understand why they used to toss virgins in volcanos.” I expect Pele would spit out this lot. Hardly qualified.
Curious question. Has the apparent size of the crater/cone and lava pond/lake gotten slowly bigger over time or is that just my imagination. I haven’t looked in a while and just looked after getting back from the store and it just struck me that the areal extent looks larger than in the past. Maybe it’s just something to do with the light (or lack of) and perspective.
The camera zoomed in a little, not quite sure when, but over a day ago.
The cone has become higher but not larger at the base, at least in the view from the mbl.is camera. The ridge to the south has become considerably higher. This is the main growth area and I think it is mainly the lava lake to the side of the cone. A lot of the lava ends up there, hidden from view. The lava flows on the nordur camera are impressive but a bit of a side show.
Translated with Google Translate:
A volcanologist says that it is likely that the crater at Litla-Hrút will fail soon. If it breaks to the east, a catastrophe could occur if the area is not evacuated. He says that there is a chance that a new crater will open east of Keili.
Now that thirteen days have passed since the eruption began at Litla-Hrút, the crater seems to be filling up. According to volcanologist Þorvald Þórðarson, the crater has widened significantly, which indicates that the walls of the crater could collapse shortly.
“If that happens, we kind of don’t know where, in which direction they will collapse.” They could go west like the other day but they could also go east. There are people quite close to the craters and they are in a very dangerous place. If this breaks to the east, it is not certain that these people will be able to escape the lava flow because it flows so fast, it could go 100 meters in two seconds,” says Þorvaldur.
He believes there is some chance that a new crater will open in the area, and it would be east of Keili, but there you can find a so-called earthquake shadow.
“If we look at the seismic activity east of Keili, there is a seismic shadow. It could be telling us that magma is accumulating under the area at a shallow depth. There has been an increase in geothermal activity which is consistent with the magma being shallow and the area heating up. So yes, there is a possibility that we might get an eruption east of Keili,” says Þorvaldur.
In regard to “increase in geothermal activity” did volcanologist Þorvaldur explain what this was?
It means the ground is hot.
one more comment on this, right now at 23:30 pm, Isak Finnbogason commented about the clouds going straight up from the cone and up to Mt Keilir. It seems odd that the cloud is hovered right over that region, and appears to be rising straight up.
The current crater is certainly filling up. Looks like it will overtop the wall soon, and likely tear it down.
I wonder how deep the small lava lake is?
Meanwhile the Hrutur Nord Cam is regularly blocked by contestants for the “2023 Wool Bobble Cap Gurning Award.”
Prize is a dip in the lava lake…
🙂
Isak Finnbogason just flew his drone thru the lava splatter above the crater. At approx 20:20 local time.
Good closeup of the defect in the north wall just short of the rime of the cone.
Even better fly by’s at 21.20 in this one. Drone survived at the end…
That was heart-stopping! Ísak is a very lucky drone owner…
21:45 a major dust devil.
22:56 cone is showing signs of soon overflowing at the S rim.
A fairly thick accumulation of lava flows has developed to the S and W of the cone since the western flank failure the other day. The cone is now fairly well buttressed on that side, so if another failure occurs it will likely be to the NE.
So far the walls of the cone have held up well against the constant sloshing, of an almost full-to-the-brim lava lake.
lava has seemed to be oozing out of numerous breaches, from under the previously cooled lava layers.
Visually it is a complete mess and I would not like to be the person, who has to clear it all up when this is all over. 🙂
.
Especially interesting here is a change in the eruption’s behavior after that west wall collapse. Prior to that, the lava was all flowing out in one spot and flowing along a fixed channel, stably. Since then, it seems to be unable to establish stable channels — all outlets from the cone and all channels on the ground seem to gradually choke themselves off over time, leading to pressure rising in the cone and then something uncorking somewhere and leading to the establishment of fresh outlets and channels. This includes when for a while yesterday it returned to using its original exit and going down its original channel — that too soon choked itself off, in a matter of hours, whereas before the west collapse it had used that pathway stably for days.
That last indicates that something must have changed in the behavior of the lava itself, making it more prone to dam itself than before. Has there been a change in the temperature, chemistry, or crystal content? Could that change have played a role in causing that flank failure?
Earlier today, at 8:05 am Iceland time I saw the hot spot develop on the SE side of the cone, then a 2nd one appeared, and we had a major release but upwelling lava, to the right, a bit later the lava tube uncorked with a big gush.
About this time, a helicopter went up and around and around surveying the area, one time it did a sweep past the RUV.IS camera, so obviously authorities were concerned, as the cone was leaking from both the SE and NW locations. We all saw the cone collapse previously on the west side, so I am sure that the thought was that perhaps another cone failure would soon occur. and for everyone to be out of harms way.
Now it is 1 am Iceland time and the whole area around the cone is a mess, just as you indicate. And yes, the cone is topped off with very fluid hot lava, seemingly unable to exit to empty the cone.
I honestly don’t have a clue as to why all of a sudden we have all this lava flowing underground from the cone and popping up, like gopher holes in the lawn, but we do.
What caught my attention this evening, was on one of Isak Finnbogan’s drone flights that an odd cumulus cloud arose straight up from the area, from the cone all the way to Mt Keilir, and it was quite unusual, as if that whole area was emitting water vapor and the cloud rising straight up from it. Even right now as I write, this is visible from a camera in Reykavik.
There are 3 quakes which occurred right underneath Keilir, the past 8 hours, and there was a post by Hildur quoting an Iceland volcanologist stating that geothermal activity is in the area.. so my best guess at the moment is that the change of behavior is due to the underground magma near or underneath Keilir and how it is behaving at the moment.
I have been watching the Isak Finnbogason drone video for this evening, but it seems like lave flowing south towards Meradalir has stopped. All I see is all the lava channels all around the cone to the south and southeast.
Does anyone know if the main flow southward has stopped?
I’ve also been watching the development or rather lack of development of the lava flow towards the South. I assumed that a lava stream would head for the ocean along the easiest path.That has not really happened so far and may never happen.
There may not be enough height difference from this crater down through the valley to overcome resistance. At the moment, the scene looks like a pancake on the griddle. Will we then have to settle for a small shield rising until the magma is choked off?
Probaly a new vent will open soon
23:16:45 something uncorks in the SW outlet again, stirring up the pond near there and triggering a lot of crust overturnings.
3.54 quake in Katla, looks like left lateral strike-slip quake, and since the very shallow depth of 135 meters, this would indicate a movement to the west away from the caldera center. (if I am reading this correctly). The dip of 75 degs is nearly vertical and the rake of 10 deg indicates slight upward movement along the fault plane.
TIME 23:17:26 2023-07-23
MAGNITUDE 3.54 mlw
DEPTH 0.135 km
AREA: Miðhálendið – Mýrdalsjökull – Katla
89 STRIKE
75 DIP
10 SLIP/RAKE
Seismic moment: 6.13e+13
NEAREST Volc.system:: 5.2 km. W from Kötlu
Town:: 25.4 km. NNW from Vík í Mýrdal (541 pop.)
Seismometer:: Goðabunga (6.3 km)
GPS Station:: Godaland (6.3 km)
See https://vafri.is/quake/#close
Both RUV cameras have been out of action for a few hours and still are at the time of this reply. The picture froze for a while but is now all black.
Why have they done this and how do we force RÚV to resume doing their job?
Probably because there’s a technical issue. Regardless of what the constant parade of people may lead one to think, this is actually a pretty inaccessible area, and particularly so at night.
There’s noone who would have “done this”. The cameras will be back in action once they can be serviced, and in the meantime there’s the mbl.is cameras.
That would be plausible if it was just one of them, but both of them simultaneously? And you are indicating that there are live mbl.is cameras that are working fine right now. So something selectively took out just the RÚV cameras and left the mbl.is ones intact. The only thing that could plausibly be that selective is … RÚV itself. Which makes this not a malfunction of equipment but a malfunction of policy-making by the human beings at RÚV headquarters.
I think that the fact that both have gone down at the same time may indicate that the technicians need to exercise caution when going to fix them. May be nothing more than the power source run down but remember the cameras are on a cone next to an active fissure.
Sorry, forgot they had moved one of the cams.
The cameras are there for information they aren’t obliged to have them up at all, let alone keep them maintained for your viewing satisfaction.
I find all the people (very few here thankfully, a lot on YT chats) complaining when the cameras are down, or not panned as they would like, a little self centred to think it’s a conspiracy to stop their armchair volcano watching?
How hard is it to understand that the cameras are electronic devices on a mountain in the middle of nowhere that have batteries and data connections dependent on the weather and wilds? How hard is it to understand that they are not operated by a person dedicated to satisfying what each of the individuals in the internet in random arm chairs around the world might want to see at their leisure?
I appreciate that there is any video at all, 10 (even 5) years ago there would have been nothing except what the helicopters managed to catch and we’d have thought ourselves lucky.
Can you tell this attitude is annoying me? Hope I kept within the “be nice” limits!
On the other hand, if you are aiming to sound funny B Bound it’s not coming across as such, it just sounds whiny.
Of course another option is that the volcano took the cameras out…maybe we wait to find out before complaining.
There are small white blobs on Liltli Hrutur. Could be anything, including fumaroles.
Forgot the link. (coffee not kicked in yet)
The one of the right hand side of the hill is man-made (helicopter or where one of the cameras are/was – defined edges and not moving).
B. Bound you make a lot of very insightful observations and then you have to be all conspiratorial whenever something slightly inconveniences you in the livestream. Just saying ut as it is, if you are getting problems that no one else is then it is 100% on your end. And for this particular comment do you really think that a national company would turn off their livestream that is collectively viewed by thousands of people just to inconvenience you, just one anonymous viewer, not even marked by a face or a name that means anything relevant to your identity offline. No it is a targeted interruption not something like a bad connection, because those never happen in foggy or smomey conditions far outside of normal internet access, and especially not on exposed hills in the arctic, that is just absurd, no it is all a big conspiracy by Big Iceland…
Either that or you are trolling, in which case facebook or twitter comment feeds are more your style. Lots of other narcissistic trolls there that you can provoke and fight with.
To the admins I apologise for breaking the be nice rule but I am taking one for the team, its happened every eruption, and it is equally annoying every time…
Idiot.
Have you ANY idea how hard it is to maintain operational cameras and datalinks in such a remote area?
“a malfunction of policy-making by the human beings at RÚV headquarters”
I’m going to say nothing more on that because I would violate the ‘be nice’ rule, but in your case it’s deserved. And before you complain, I literally do this for a living.
Well they would not be turning the camera off to inconvenience a viewer as they use the cams to monitor the eruption – they being volcanologists and the local authorities.
Sometimes it seems that patience is a quality slowly being lost in a fast paced world and I admit to nit being the most patient person myself, most paticularly with entitled tourists.
I have really enjpyed the RUV cams and sincerely thank them for bringing me so much enjoyment at the wonderful spectacle we have seen, particularly as they so quickly moved the Litli Hrutur cam to a superb position for viewing the volcano. Anyone feeling frustrated at the interruption in sevice then be thankful this eruption occured at the height of summer. In winter with the long Iceland nights of darkness and the frequent fogs on the mountains we would have many, many interruptions to out viewing pleasure. Remember the 2021 eruption had very many days of not being able to see the action because of low clouds and fog.I personally used such days to catch up doing all the things I had been neglecting. Today I shall spend gardening.
This is a volcano science blog. We are grateful for the eruption viewing that is provided but we are not in business of forcing people or telling them what their job is. Asking why cameras are out is fine, making accusations is not acceptable. Please consider this a warning.
I totally agree with Albert. I for one am grateful that RUV even make these public, let alone the cost of doing so. I for one have no complaints, quite the reverse.
Well done RUV.
And Hi to the technicians who work on them.
I might be less charitable to people who block the view and I will say no more on this because I wouldn’t be nice at all.
Here is another intresting question, how fast woud Vatnajökull dissapear If Iceland was placed at the equator? Decades? or just years?
Why does Fagradalsfjall build such a shield volcano on Reykjanes peninsula? There is only the rift, not the influence of Iceland’s Hotspot (located at Vatnajökull).
There is a lot of influence from the plume, the magma chemstry is MORB but it is far more productive than a slow spreading boundary has any right to be, the heat travels far. The reykjanes ridge is much more active than other segments of the MAR, which is visible in the underwater topography, it is an actual ridge not a rift valley.
Exactly Reykjanes ridge looks like a fast spreading ridge swollen, and thats because plume infuense, it extends 800 kilometers south of Iceland that ridge morphology so perhaps mantle plume materials are flowing under the ridge in the astenosphere
I guess the submarine part of the Reykjanes Ridge erupts a few times during a human lifetime for every 200 km of it, for every part of the normal MAR there maybe many 1000 s of years between eruptions
This is not a shield yet. But you get shields from fluid lava which can travel further from the point (or line) of origin before running out of liquid. These are small eruptions, so it doesn’t need to travel very far to get a shield shape.
Its forming lava tubes so a typical shield behaviour ( and the nord cam is online )
The really large shields in Iceland forms durning 100 s of years long tube feed pahoehoe eruptions with lavas thats maybe more fluid than this one .. they are like Puu Oo but much much larger and more long lived..
With lava tubes lava can indeed travel long ways. A difficulty for the current eruption is the soft slope. The eruption is at 200m above sea level. From there any direction is very flat compared with Hawaii. I don’t know the typical steepness of Hawaii’s flanks. The most flat flank is the NERZ of Mauna Loa which brakes lava flow speed much. But I guess that the NERZ flank is still steep compared with Fagradal’s northern shield flank.
The diameter is impressive with estimated 10km. The place of the current eruption is on the southern border of the shield structure. From there it’s nearly 10km until the northern coast. The way to the north looks more open with no barriers and even land, while the southern part of Fagradalsfjall is much more segmented with many steep hills and valleys (like the buried Geldingadalir).
I was thinking about whether there is a small local plume below Fagradalsfjall that awakes every 8000 years. Does the Icelandic plume has a familiy of few smaller plumes around?
No separate plumes but deeper magma can feed separate volcanoes as long as they are separated by roughly the depth of the magma. One of my less successful posts:
https://www.volcanocafe.org/volcano-ecology/
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qGJMcdJsFk0&feature=share8
Another Tokair timelapse up to the camera freeze overnight. It really is a lava tangle, I’m glad I don’t have to unravel that mess!
From the amount of lava coming out of those breakouts, there must surely be some underground channels feeding them.
My question was when did all this underground plumbing start, i.e. did pressure from the lava lake in the cone slowly create the channels underneath the cone outwards? This seems to be very recent, say a couple of days? (just a guess)
I expect that the cone ‘leaks’ underground (or at least underneath the lava cover). The gas comes out through the cone, but the lava itself has other ways. It is a bit like Kilauea’s lava lake: we only see what is happening on the surface, not whether the lava pool underneath is receiving new input. That one is a bit easier because there is no escape: is lava enters, eventually the surface has to respond. Here, the lava pond is underneath the new ridge and it has lots of escape paths, which can reach the surface at some distance. The lava flows have largely stopped because the lava is currently pooling.
It is hard to predict what may happen. The pool may break and suddenly empty in a big flood. The cone may rupture and release a smaller flood in any direction (tourist beware). The original rift may rupture in another place. The eruption may slowly peter out. But at the moment it is confined to a harmless place and very touristic. Atmospheric, even.
From the looks of it in the last timelapse, the main part of the lava exits the cone through the western exit that was created in the collapse. It’s crusted over now, but there’s a constant flow in the perched pond. From the pond it seeps out under the crust, mainly to the south. From there it breaks out in several places and dynamically make new paths as old ones get congested.
This was obviously before the current collapse to the north. Now the output to the pond is dramatically reduced.
As the cone drained, the level in this lava pond also dropped. The cone and the pond seem to be in direct connection, beyond that small exit.
The crust on the pond stopped moving completely. I think the exit point inside the crater ended up above the current lava level.
After the first big collapse, the cone started building again, raising the exit point until it became a lava fall. Then it built a roof and effectively constructed a tube. After that point, the exit stayed at the same level inside the churning lake, and the exit point outside the cone remained under the surface of the perched pond. It may resume again when the north part of the cone is rebuilt and the lake level rises again.
Thomas. Your supposition is proving correct. The lava in the cone has risen a bit again and slowly the lava is exiting the cone again through the low western exit and the lava lake is starting up again. I very much enjoyed seeing this start to happen.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yJfiMhqLgTY&pp=ygUYaWNlbGFuZCB2b2xjYW5vIGxpdmUgcnV2
Old goodie webcam is online again and the eruption is getting tube feed too
Thanks Jesper. Gardening cancelled, it looks like it will rain where I live anyway.
Actually both the missing RUV cams are back up again.
Did they miss the Gollum party? 😉
They switched it back on at about 09:30, after it had been switched off at 04:00 (oddly round numbers for a “natural disaster” that also selectively hit only cameras operated by 1 particular company, even though they were kilometers apart and interspersed with other cameras that were unaffected, don’t you think?) and paused at 02:12 before that. The reason is still unknown (and I never claimed it had anything to do with me, and in fact I asked why it was done rather than presuming to know).
There is, immediately thereafter, very heavy dust devil activity visible immediately NE of the cone, with frequent and huge vortices forming. I also saw a small devil quite far N of the cone, closer to the expanding ring of moss fires than to the cone and its associated lava. That is quite interesting: where is the heat coming from that powered the latter devil? Surely not from Iceland’s famously balmy climate. It corroborates the information that there’s extra heat coming from the ground along a line from the cone to east of Keilir, as the distant devil was right on that line.
Had you considered that both cams were set up at the same time. Both cams have the same battery, both cams likely have solar power and would have had the same degree of sunshine or lack thereof to charge them. Perhaps the engineers knew that they would run out at a certain time so switched both off after the favourite cam had a frozen picture for a significant amount of time. I am not an engineer but it seems logical to me that both cams would require servicing at the same time. Whatever the issue it is sorted so enjoy what you have while it lasts. Looking at the cams at the current time we didn’t miss anything spectacular as can be seen on mbl cams
Very unlikely to be anything to do with the cameras themselves, or their power systems.
When more than one camera simultaneously goes down, it’s much more likely to be related to the *datalink* that sends the data from ALL the cameras back to the operator – battery issues, or other technical or routing issues.
09:53:36 am a very unique dust devil (volcanado?) occurred to the upper left, but it was 4 miniture or so mini-dust devils clustered together as one bigger dust devil. It moved very slowly too as the air right now is very calm (for Iceland) Quite a unique sight – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJfiMhqLgTY
I unfortunately missed it but what you saw may have been a multi-vortex dust devil. Were the individual subvortices rotating around a common center? If so, that’s what it was. Multiple vortices are fairly common in both tornadoes and dust devils and occur when a certain threshold is reached for the so-called “swirl ratio”: the ratio of the tangential (swirling) component to the radial (inward) component of the horizontal wind spiraling in to the base of the vortex.
The current view from the Litli Hrutur camera is mesmerising.
With the smoke from the moss fires forming a white curtain and good visibility up to said curtain, it’s like the vent sits on a stage.
I love to scroll back the cams to the dark hours.
From one of the ruvs cams the cone looks like a huge hot tub.
Staring at it, through the sulfur damp, you faintly can see three trolls bading…, cheering themselves…, banging their fists in the lava!!!
Hahaha!
Seeing how the cone has grown a bit of a prow at both ends, now, I can’t help but see a viking ship in the shape of it.
Low, broad and it just keeps going. This must be a Knarr.
Knarragigar?
The craters of the Fagradalsfjall fires are called Tjadsgigar
🙂
hm
Hmm indeed!
Tjadsgigar… T-yads-gigar… Chad…. Chadsgigar
Busted!
I already named the 2021 cone to Morgoth ..
All New Icelandic features should be named in Sindarin : D fitting to Icelands high fantasy feel
It is 10:28:03 am in Iceland as I write and from the Litli-Hrutur camera, the cone appears to be shutting down. In the first eruption, I remember when the 2 vents seemed to shut down, then the north fissures opened up and lava was rapidly flowing down into a valley. Could we be close to a new breakout towards the E near Keilir?
Still boiling vigorously so there is a path up there, its getting tube feed now
A pice of cone at the rear must have broken as lava is spilling down the back as seen on the driffelshraun cam.
Now flooding the plain.
bursts of white flame, like firecrackers going off, next to the edge of the encroachment is a bit unusual, not the typical orange yellow flames.
Might be the remains of ‘burnt’ moss (or pre-burnt moss) – that might combust differently when exposed to *extreme* heat….since the rest of the moss had smoldered away, not really a fire to begin with?
had someone been in that area, they could not possibly have outrun the advance of that very fluid and hot lava
lava lake level has substantially dropped too
I agree about being thankful no-one was on that plain at the time the cone burst.
I really hope that the people running there the other day sees this!!
11:25:25 am something broke loose on the NW side and appears to be a gusher
fairly substantial, the moss flames kicking up all over to the middle and right of the camera view
Randall it started at 11:18 timestamp on this cam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_q1N4J5oTSE
You can just see the start at the back of the cone and started flooding the plain a few minutes later.
You can now see a subtantial gap at the back of the cone. So looks like we have another direction for the lava flowing out.
So grateful both RUV cams were back up in time to see this new breakout from the cone. On the other cams it cannot be seen.
Seems to have broken along the same cracks I saw on Isak’s stream the other day when people were walking on the now flooded plain.
You can see parts of the collapse on the mbl (2) camera….not as well, of course, due to distance and depressed elevation, but it is there.
Pretty substantial collapse and release of lava for sure, though!
(Run away from the lava right into a pretty substantial dust devil…..fire and wind rather active!!)
I just watched it again on this cam and the leak started at 11.18 with the wall starting to collapse at 11:25 and the full collapse 11:26. Fascinating to see the way that back wall crumbled and the rocks tumbling down. So Randall we were both correct in our timings.
Look again, the leak came already att 11.16 with a small failure at the top of the rim.
Alice, I missed it on the Litli_Hrutur cam as I was watching only the RUV.IS nortur cam. Had I been watching both, I would have been alerted sooner. Well, it takes more than 1 pair of eyes 😉
Looking on the mbl.is webcam, there’s a rim collapse at 11.09.40 that starts the whole shebang off.
https://youtube.com/live/uZGleOgreBY?feature=share8
Yes, followed by a partial wall failure at 11.16 that initiates overflow that leads to the full collapse at 11.25 when the entire section between the cracks fails.
Looks as if there’s a decent ramp now for lava egress – hopefully that will help keep the rest of the cone in ‘good’ shape for a while!?
Guess we’ll see on Isak’s next flight.
That was incredibly well spotted Stars. You clearly have younger eyes than me!
Just my two cents question. Is the failure in the same spot as the back wall hotspot?
Mac
Yes, I’m pretty sure it is.
Also thinking that the collapse was just to the east of the original one – untouched cone wall?
Is it just me or has the lava round the cone risen a lot? Guess the cone could have sunk or both?
Source: the restored web cam. https://www.livefromiceland.is/webcams/eruption2307_1
Yes, the lava pools and frequent spills from these in different directions have definitely raised the level. This is likely part of the reasona that it got harder and harder to push out lava through the under-pool outlets. This then raised the lake in the cone until the rim of the cone broke.
The Driffelshraun camera shows a very large, strong dust devil NW of the cone from 11:16 to 11:20 and another during the big flood around 11:27. A third occurs after another ten minutes or so.
I also noticed that someone zoomed the Driffellshraun camera in during the event.
Mac
Same camera, just to the right of the RUV.IS stamp…..See a couple of people moving to the right in front of the flow front.
12:05:50
Macusn
I think those are fires that moves as the front progresses.If we are looking at the same things
Think the gremlins have got the webcam again (13:06). An image that Jesper may like?
Source: https://www.livefromiceland.is/webcams/eruption2307_1
Pressing a button and it goes Ionian : D
Things should be safer now, being that people cant literally walk to the bottom of the cone anymore now that this breakout has buried that area. Still isnt going to stop the idiots who will walk on the lava but the average sensible viewers will now be far enough away that a sudden breakout is not going to engulf them.
I’ve come to learn from conversations with individuals in certain FB groups that concern for the good and welfare of the braindead is a waste of good ATP. As for the government and the ICE-SAR whom, by having established guidelines, restricted zone, authorized hiking paths, visitation hours and the like, and literally enforced nothing, they are a waste of time as well. Better they should have left well enough alone and not stepped in it. Simply advising that the site constituted an extreme geological hazard and that the public should stay away would have sufficed. Having done otherwise, if there’s a tragedy, next of kin may claim that the State had a duty to protect and enforce which it did not rise to and execute
I strongly disagree. The volunteers working in ICE-SAR are doing a fantastic job trying to keep everyone safe. There’s no vaccine against stupid and it’s impossible to stop all individuals from trying to reach death by volcano, but they are doing a pretty darn good job.
This is Iceland, not the USA. You can’t just lawyer up and go to court just because someone didn’t babysit you enough. I’m honestly getting a bit tired of your rants. Why not just try to enjoy the show instead?
Different strokes, dude. There’ s no vaccine for stupid and the fat lady has yet to sing.
We had such an incident in Norway some decades ago. I don’t think our laws are too different from Iceland’s. A brave gentleman from the US ignored a sign saying “Danger. Don’t pass this point” a few hundred metres from a glacier. He ventured close to it, a few tons of ice broke off, crushing him to death. His family sued somebody, something about fences and stuff, and the case was promptly dismissed. Signs mean what they say, in this case in fourteen different languages.
The circumstances here are different, in that the State, by printing a map, establishing a red zone, stating hours, acceptable and preferable hiking paths, putting responders on the site, giving aid and comfort, has become a facilitator for individuals ignoring the State’s prohibitions. They should have left it as Norway did with the glacier. ‘Stay away’.. Having said that, I withdraw out of respect for the group.
If there is one thing I have learned, it is that social media is never to be trusted fully, it is like Wikipedia, except nowdays Wikipedia is actually solidly reliable. An example, I like electric cars, so FB naturally sends me adds for those, and the amount of so called ‘experts’ in the comments whos knowledge on the subject is ‘it will break in 1 year and its made in china’ is honestly just astonishing, its not even disappointing, its actually impressive how narrow minded most people are on social media, the entire point of the concept is to generate an echo chamber so you basically get a god complex. Most of the volcano groups I have seen are well moderated but there are still way too many people who have no idea what they are actually talking about. One of them actually banned any posts discussing the cameras being down it got so bad.
So can everyone here who seems to think the webcams buffering or a happy observer waving is a personal vendetta against them just please just chill the F out? The repeated need to let everyone know every 10 comments is way more annoying to read than what is actually being complained about…
Amen to that!
“nowdays Wikipedia is actually solidly reliable”
On matters of undisputed fact, yes it is. Pretty good on boiling points or electron energy levels in atoms.
On anything the slightest bit politically contentious, it’s more dubious.
Is there anyone from any other country than the US who thinks that the Icelandic Government or any other organisation could be held responsible for someone getting injured or killed from the lava?
If you are close enough for that to happen no one can be held responsible except you.
And your insurance company isn’t going to pay out either I would guess…volcano is absolutely a natural disaster, and is probably excluded from all legal points under the “Act of God” clause that appears quite a lot. I think I’ve got the term right, too lazy to check 😉
It happens in many countries – the US is by no means the worst. Someone blatantly ignoring signs will find little support in any country, including the US. But not all signs are sufficient. When people can walk across open land, where do you put the warning signs? Does that involve liability?
An extreme case of liability was in Italy some years ago, where seismologists had not warned for a larger earthquake and were held liable for that. (That was later overturned in court.) Governments go after scientists in ways they would not do with companies.
There looks to be a LOT of fires a good way behind the eruption area. Hopefully just moss fires and not a new eruption on the dike.
I can only deal with one at a time. 🙂
Sadly both the RUV cams have frozen again. 🙁
Alice, you’re a VolcanoCafe regular so you probably already know of this link, but if not, try
https://eruption.acme.to
It aggregates the MBLS, Visor and RUV webcams all on one page. If one video provider is down, the others will probably still be working.
Yes Jimp you are correct. I remember it and have it bookmarked still from the first eruption. However many others wont so always good to give a link to extra cams. My sadness was because those two RUV cams are in my opinion the best mostly because of clarity of picture which of course is due to closeness. Thank you again for being so considerate in adding that link.
There was a white vehicle and at least 4 white-clad figures went up to the lava front – possible scientists collecting more samples? Professor Val Troll has posted a couple of short videos today, I wonder if it’s his group?
I also noticed those white clad figures. Clearly scientists, and having seen videos of such ones taking samples of magma and dumping it into a bucket of water to cool it enough to move it, then they have all my respect. A very dangerous job at times.
Forgot to say, do you have a link at all to the videos you saw?
Try “Volcano Troll” on YouTube.
I would like to ask the scientists 2 questions.
1. what was the main concern of the long (90 min+) helicopter monitoring flight? possible cone collapse?
2. why has the lava flow pattern changed from one stream to a comglomeration of small flows clustered around the cone complex?
The University of Iceland published new data about the eruption on their website with data from July 23rd.
https://jardvis.hi.is/is/eldgos-vid-litla-hrut-nidurstodur-maelinga-23-juli
In particular, I like the maps of the lava flows at the bottom of this page.
There is also this excellent drone video survey of the lower lava field from GutnTog
Well worth a watch.
What causes the blue color in the cooled lava? From the first eruption at Geldingadalir, I remember seeing some lava colored as blue as the sky (Iceland could have made $$$ selling these rocks)
Holger_Alberta:
Appreciate the post, good stuff here, and for me in particular, the flow rate.
Nice time lapse of the northern breakout from RUV news:
https://www.ruv.is/frettir/innlent/2023-07-24-gigbarmurinn-hrundi-ad-nordanverdu-388564
The graph of “room meters” (cubic meters) development shows a similarity to the radical function (a horizontal parable).
The volcano appears to have a feeling for social justice: More even lava distribution to several directions than before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJfiMhqLgTY
The high number of lava flows makes it complicated to follow where they all go, what happens where when and what’s the entire development.
Trying to use Kilauea and Fournaise as guides is turning out to be a fool’s errand. Kilauea in 1969 and 1983 were situated on the crest of a rift zone with a steep pali nearby. Fournaise’s slope is even steeper.
Little Sheep is a big pile of glop by comparison. I could see a 200-meter shield in a year, with no lava flowing more than ten miles.
Actually I kind of like the fact that the volcano is equidistributing, as that seems to be a more balanced way of distributing the lava material topside, than one concentrated channel which is too vulnerable to lava flow rate changes (slow the flow and things freeze up quickly)
What I would like explained is why the lava lake rises to about the maximum height in the cone, instead of automatically being released through the various underground tubes or channels which we know exist, especially the one on the left or west side after the cone collapse, so that the lake level is minimal. For some reason, this lake wants to be as high as possible.
Due to the collapses a lot of rubble has collected on the bottom of the lava lake. So it probably isnt that deep to begin with, outside perhaps directly above the vent.
This rubble falling in the couldron and the pressure of the tons of rock above the tunnels is also closing off the deeper tunnels. So the lava is probably only drains though tunnels with a high enough enterance.
Doesn’t the rubble re-melt to lava?
Yes, stuff does remelt.. but slower than we’d think. I do think about the surging from the 1st eruption, the gas in the lava was definitely the driving factor in keeping the cone lava lake full. We all remember the lake cycling, and surging. So I think some explanation will involve gas dynamics in the fluid lava and pistoning action of the gas-charged lava and the fissure feed below and the lake fluid lava pressure above.
Some of it, sure. But most of it stays rubble.
Afteral, if all the rock that comes in contact with the fresh lava were to melt. It wouldnt be able to build a cone at all.
Also note that the rubble has roughly the same density as lava which means that it is floating around in the lava in the cone, not staying at teh bottom (where the new lava and gas enters as well). This also means that a lot of it is flushed out whenever the cone wall breaks.
It reaches an equilibrium. If the leaks can’t keep up with production we get overflows, which builds the cone higher until the pressure is so high that the flow rate through the leaks increases to the point where input and output is matched, or the pressure gets too high and the wall collapses. If on the other hand the output is larger than the input the pressure will not be enough to keep the outlet open and it will start to close. Fragments of the small cone collapses get stuck and the cone gets rebuilt again. It’s a simple control loop. A system with negative feedback.
The leaks arent real vents they are overflows that got tubed over, so they start high up in the cone. Some of them have high flow rate but a real vent fed by a dike would spatter a lot the same way the cone now does, or like the first fissure did. So there is one central cone and many rootless vents fed by tubes from the cone.
This was the case in 2021 too, lots of tubes. But that spattering vent ‘narlet’ or whatever it was called from mid August 2021, that was probably a satellite vent proper. Same for those spattering vents in Geldingadalir at the end of the eruption, higher fountaining would indicate a source of divergence deep enough that it was below the lava lake in the main cone, although maybe not that much.
It gets complicated when a tube gets really deeply buried, like the tube from Mauna Ulu to Alae crater, which was over 100 meters down eventually, because then the tube starts acting like a conduit and a real vent, but we are still far from that point in Iceland right now :).
Well all erupting lava on Earth are quite close to their freezing points ( lava have No set freezing point ) but close for it to be quite solid, there may only be a 150 c diffrence from very fluid vent lava to very viscous front Aa as temperatures rules viscosity alot. And because of lavas very low conductivity, you may expect it to not melt its sourroundings
Erupting Lava melting its ground is more a thing of rare flows close to 1300 c and true 1600 c ultramafic eruptions
One reason is that the flow rate is now rather low. The lava lake is active but not getting much flow. The height is in part because the density of the lava in the cone is lower than that in the outflows. The lake is degassing, and the gas lowers the density. As the gas escapes, the density of the lava increases again, sinks, and flows out through the escape hole. The low flow rate is also the reason it is not getting very far anymore. The eruption needs to make up its mind: go big or fade away. The hraun is already as large as the 2022 eruption, so it could leave now feeling proud of itself.. or it could decide this was a good starter and it is now time for the main course! The 2021 eruption did that – it declined for a while until suddenly fresh magma arrived at the surface for the real event.
There is supposedly a lot of magma near keilir, that second stage coudl happen not from the existing vent but from there instead. Specifically it is mentioned that magma is close to the surface north and east of Keilir, which is as far in that direction as any of the dikes in this rifting event have ever gone. I do recall that before lava actually broke the surface the biggest news was on an intrusion is exactly the area being talked about… 🙂
I expect that over the coming decade or more basically all of the area from Keilir to Natthagi will end up under lava, rifting events at specific systems on Reykjanes lasted for decades per volcano in the last cycle, and with eventually all of the rift beign activated and often the entire thing at once later in the sequence. The volcanoes here might not be quite of he same calibre as Bardarbunga but they go big or not at all, it seems like, and an eruption not dissimilar to Pu’u O’o is far from trivial being so close to basically everything important for Iceland to function properly.
The only big variable is the intensity. Intense fissure eruptions also make big and fast intrusions. Krysuvik probably has intrusions that go over a length of at least 50 km based on surface topograpy. The same goes for both Reykjanes and Svartsengi, which might be one volcano. A dike that is 5 km deep (just based on where recent dikes have been located) and 50 km long would have a volume of 0.5 km3 if it were 2 meters wide, let alone that Krysuvik erupted probably about 0.3 km3 of lava in the 1150s, and maybe another 0.1 km3 in the 900s, which would imply a second large intrusion in that event too. So realistic values for the fast eruptions are that average volumes involved are easily over 1 km3, possibly significantly more, where no more than half reaches the surface but does so violently and very fast. Brennisteinsfjoll has no grabens or rifting marks, but has huge lava flow fields and large cones, evidently its share of magma is much more successfully erupted, it is the biggest volcano in the group after all. Fagradalsfjall is far left behind but seems to be taking the latter option, so we should expect it to put out a lot of lava. And slower eruption style doesnt mean quiet, Brennisteinsfjoll still erupts as fissures many km long, with a’a flows up to over 10 km from the vent, to do that requires some significant lava production.
The eruption is already much, much longer than the majority of Krafla’s eruptions were 1975-1984. Krafla’s eruptions lasted usually a few hours to One single day. Only the later eruptions took more time from beginning to stop date. In relation to Fagradalsfjall Krafla was a disappointment for volcano watchers. Krafla was more dominated by dynamic deformation and intrusions, but short eruptions.
Just around 11 hours since the break in the wall. She has refiled herself, provided lots of lava for us to ogle at for a 1/2 day, and is ready to replay the show in the morning, nice!
Mac
23:22 – Insane lava wirl to the lift on the Nother livestream.
*to the right, on one of the rootless lava “ponds”
03:40:43 violent lava whirlwind shreds the top of the lava to shreds and fragments whirls 50’s of meters into the air.. violent wind, and strong!
Since Þorvaldur keeps talking about the area east of Keilir, it sounds like there is some concern.
Translated with Google Translate:
Þorvaldur Þórðarson, professor of petrology and volcanology at UI, says that the area between Keilis and Trolladyngja is being closely monitored. Seismic activity and other earth activity have been observed there, and there is a realistic chance of an eruption there.
“If there was an eruption near Trölladyngja or north of it, we would have a completely different scenario,” Morgunblaðið quoted him as saying in today’s coverage of the case. He said that seismic activity and other ground activity have been observed in the area since the current eruption at Litla-Hrút began.
“People have seen so-called seismic shadows there, which make people wonder if magma could possibly be accumulating under there at a shallow depth. Experts have also noticed increased thermal activity in the area. Geothermal vapors with deposits and other things seem to be coming up in this area through cracks. I believe these two things indicate that magma may be accumulating there at a relatively shallow depth. This trend has been occurring since the eruption began. “This all seems to be relatively new, and if it turns out to be true, there is a real possibility that lava will emerge from the craters in the area between Keilis and Trölladyngja,” he was quoted as saying.
He said that a new eruption could just as easily come from a new magma insert, which would then mean that it was a new eruption.
He pointed out that if it erupts at Trolladyngja or north of it, the scene will change completely. If lava flows from there to the north, Reykjanesbraut will be very vulnerable.
(For those who don’t know, Reykjanesbraut is the main road to the Keflavik airport)
Hildur-I enjoyed reading that report-intesting times for volcanic Iceland!
Where did you read this?
Here it is:
https://www.dv.is/frettir/2023/7/25/thorvaldur-segir-raunhaefar-likur-nyju-gosi-milli-keilis-og-trolladyngju-gjorbreytt-svidsmynd/
Hildur, thank you, I have been looking for this kind of information, appreciate your post.
In the week before the eruption there was a lot of quakes in the area described, between Keilir and Trolladyngja, which is part of Krysuvik. It was said to be tectonic in origin and the bigger quakes probably were but it did also look like an intrusion going into the area, probably a sill. If that is the case then it completely changes the dynamics because a sill at shallow depth would allow for way more intense eruptions, maybe over 1000 m3/s compared to the 50-100 m3/s this eruption began with. This is all speculation but it does still fit pretty well more or less with what the experts are hinting at.
Even if it isnt the above, the area in question is about 70 meteds lower than the spot erupting now, and that is without the extra 30-40 meters the new cone affords. So basically the lava lake sloshing in the cone is over 100 meters above this potential breakout, already that is going to gush out even before adding the pressure that will probably be there already. The road is indeed very much at risk if that happens, such breakout flows are no joke.
Where have you heard it’s supposed to be a sill? I have only heard of a dyke segment stretching a small distance beyond Keilir.
That is only my speculation based on the quake area, forgot to add. There can be both the dike and sill though too.
I haven’t seen much of a sill signature in the InSAR data. Just the dyke and some strike slip faults. Still waiting for an updated InSAR though.
Yes the last insar was before the quakes in that area were prominent, if I remember correctly.
Although I also recall that the intrusions at Svartsengi, which so far have all been sills, have been interpreted as dikes running at weird angles to the surface rift zones on multiple occasions. So no one is perfect I guess.
is this for real???
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364682623000664?via%3Dihub
Scientists have found a link between earthquakes and cosmic rays. Studies show that the tremors are linked to the cosmic rays that bombard our planet.
They noticed that everytime cosmic rays bombarded our planet Earth’s seismic activity surged after 15 days.
In that case, Roland Emmerich will have the last laugh regarding 2012.
Unlikely to the extreme
As I understand it, the explanation is that changes in the geomagnetic field would cause detections of cosmic rays to increase. This means that the increase would be induced by the upcoming earthquake, as opposed to the earthquake being induced by the cosmic rays. Maybe it shouldn’t be dismissed entirely, although I’m always sceptical about these things.
The earth magnetic field affects the solar wind and iron needles but that is about it. It is very weak compared to the forces acting in solid rock. And I am not aware of an effect of the earth magnetic field on cosmic rays. The fluctuation in those is related to the solar wind: a strong solar wind (solar maximum) means fewer cosmic rays can reach us. Nothing to do with us. Third, the comics rays only barely reach the ground: they don’t travel any significant distance into the ground – they don’t get anywhere near where earthquakes originate. Correct me if I am wrong, but I am highly sceptical. Read Lurking’s post on the idea that tidal forces (rather larger than the magnetic ones) affect earthquakes: he showed that to be a failure of statistics. My suspicion is that this idea is no better.
I hear you. I normally just dismiss these without giving it a single thought, but I always assumed they meant that cosmic rays (or tidal forces, sunspots, gremlins or whatever) was a trigger. I was just a bit surprised that cause and effect switched roles here. Then again, if the geomagnetic field changes two weeks before an earthquake, it would seem like a better idea to measure the magnetic field directly rather than some indirect effect. I really have no knowledge whatsoever about these things, so I think I’ll just keep quiet, have another cold one and watch a volcano instead 😉
Changes in the geomagmatic field can be caused by earth’s core which also drives the Earth’s mantle dynamics. Therefore there can be a parallel causal relation. But the Core is the condition for all. Maybe we don’t understand enough of the Core’s influence on the earthcrust, on earthquakes and volcanism, because it’s far away and difficult to examine.
The mantle is ductile. Earthquakes are a feature of the crust, not the mantle. The core has no direct influence on the crust. Convection in the mantle is slow and acts over longer time scales. We are back at the magnetic field which is too weak for this
Didn’t GutNTog film geothermal activity to the east of Keilir near Trolladyngja on one of his drone flights awhile ago? Was this coincidental? Or perhaps a harbinger? I do believe the gentleman’s well which ran hot water was a definite indication of the eruption event. It would be interesting to find these cracks in the ground emitting vapors which I have to assume contain sulfur.