The Plume of Ballareldar?

To me the part of a volcano that is visibly erupting is the least exciting part. Perhaps a better way of stating it is, that it is only the effect of the cause. This is obviously not true to most people on the planet, so I think I owe everyone an explanation. And that explanation is especially important since we need to look deep into the volcano, to understand its future.   Like most people I can obviously spend hours looking at lava bombs being hurled, and lava slowly filling valleys. But, getting…

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Holohraun Five Years Later

A guest post from Salting I visited Iceland many times in the past to meet friends and take a day off on my way between Europa and US. In summer 2011 I made an extra-long stop and visited a glacier to better understand the forces that shaped the coastline around my Swedish home island. Trekking…

On the importance of Deep Quacks

Back in early 2011 I was sitting down for a late light evening read of “Lower-crustal earthquakes caused by magma movement beneath Askja volcano on the north Icelandic rift” by Soosalu et al. As I read angels started to sing a glorious hymn as I had an epiphany and my view on how volcanoes operate…

Eruptions to come

Let’s start with a question. Which country do you think has the most frequent volcanic eruptions? Before you read on (or peek below for the answer), take a minute to think about it. You can probably guess that Australia is not a front runner. In fact, only two or three countries readily come to mind.…

Living Dangerously – Grimsvötn Forecasted

In August of 2017 Albert and I stuck our necks out on a limb and made a forecast each of what the future pattern of Grimsvötn was most likely to be. Or in other words, when would it erupt next. As I reread our two separate forecasts, I am struck by how different methodologies we…

Black Swans and Iceland

Two weeks ago I wrote about statistics and the possibility to predict volcanoes in any way by using statistics. I think that the point was a bit lost, my entire point was to show that it was impossible to in any useful manner predict when an eruption would occur, and also that it is impossible…

Bárðarbunga… A restless giant

I got the honour and privilege to be the author of the first blog post of 2018. So let me take this opportunity to wish all our readers, visitors and the managing team a very happy and healthy new year.   The Bardarbunga eruption in 2014 was impressive in many ways. It was a rifting event,…

Notre petit nuage magique

In her 1948 novel “Trollkarlens hatt” (Finn Family Moomintroll), Finnish author Tove Jansson describes how on the first day of spring Moomintroll and his friends discover a large, black hat and bring it home without knowing that it is the Magician’s lost hat and that anything that stays in the hat too long will be…

Who ordered a Bárðarbunga?

After writing the Woolly Mammoth Guide to Icelandic Volcanism I vowed to not write about Iceland for a while. That comment bit me in the posterior rather quickly. Since the cessation of the Holuhraun eruption the central volcano Bárðarbunga has been highly seismically active. Many people have fervently believed that this has been due to…