We have had quite a ride. The eruption began unseen, on March 19. The new fissure opened on April 5, after the initial double cone had begun to wane. The new fissures sprouted a series of cones, mostly twinned. By May, all twins had exterminated one of the siblings, and the survivors had battled for supremacy leaving one winner. From now on, this would be a singular eruption.
Remember our adorable cone-let that started the eruption? Now completely buried?
On midnight May 2nd, everything changed. The tremor increased, the eruption went out, and then suddenly the world exploded. This kept happening, as often as 5 times per hour; 400-meter tall fire fountains were visible from Reykjavik. The seismographs remained extremely noisy for a long time, many weeks, while the volcano kept booming and the lava rose and fell around every boom and bust. Over time, the strength of the booms diminished and the eruption became a pulsing one, with a lava pulse (and a boiling lava lake) every 8 or 9 minutes. Amazingly, during all this time the eruption volume remained constant.
There was a general expectancy among volcanologists, volcano watchers and the tourist board that the eruption could continue for years. But on June 28 the eruption suddenly stopped, only to resume a few hours later. This has since become a pattern. The seismographs suddenly go silent and lava retreats out of sight, leaving an empty cone. Then the noise slowly increases, lava rises and a flood of boiling lava appears, looking like a lava tsunami coming down the sides of the cone. The flood diminishes, the seismographs goes flat and the cycle repeats. The duration of the active periods has varied from a few hours to a full day but apart from a lengthening there is no clear pattern. And yesterday the volcano flat-lined and did not come to life again for over a day. Is this the beginning of the end, or is it the end of the beginning? Who knows. GPS measurements show deflation around the eruption: lava is erupting faster than it is being replenished. That can not last forever. On the other hand the remarkably constant effusion rate shows that the eruption is not limited by available pressure but by the carrying capacity of the conduit.
In the mean time, the Iceland Meteorological Office ordered extensive hill fog to blanket the eruption into extinction. That didn’t work. Iceland’s engineers experimented with other types of eruption control. On May 14 they began work to build two walls, in order to contain the lava field. To our amazement it worked for a while but eventually the walls were overtopped. Other walls were build to protect Natthagakriki (June 15) and the coastal road (June 25). These still hold, helped by the fact that the lava gave up and decide to flow the other way. The new walls haven’t really been tested yet. If the eruption now ends, then the engineers will be happy and the government will declare that the battle against the Earth was won and take credit. If the eruption continues, then all bets are off.
The recent eruption has shown four distinct phases, with possibly a fifth just happening
- Constant effusion. This was the start when the lava flowed continuously;
- Intermittent fountaining. This was an exciting phase, approaching a strombolian eruption;
- Pulsing with a few minutes of activity followed by some 5 minutes of quiescence; each pulse produced spattering and mini-fountains, with quiet flows in between;
- Intermittent activity, with bubbly lava lakes for a time of several hours or longer with lava flooding, followed by a sudden retreat where the lava disappears and the seismographic first show pulses and then goes dead quiet. After some hours (or longer) the seismograph begins to show a bit of noise, which increases while the lava slowly rises up again. Over recent days the pulsing during the turn-off has become very weak.
- (Failure. The eruption interrupts but does not restart)
The amazing aspect is that the average flow rate did not change over this time, at least until the last few days. All measurements have returned 13m3, ever since early May, while the eruption went through these changes. Neither has the lava composition changed much, although there have been some minor variations. What is happening?
Let’s first look at the lava itself. It has a mantle-like composition, i.e. a form of basalt. Basalt may not be what you want in your plumbing, but in fact it flows quite well as long as it remains insulated. It has a low viscosity and is low in silicates (the two are related). The composition has shown that the magma formed at a high temperature of around 1250K at a depth of 15-20 km. It erupts at a bit lower temperature of 1170K. It contains some amount of CO2, and less SO2. This did not change during the changes of the eruption style. The dissolved water content has not been reported but for Iceland eruptions is typically around 0.8%.
The seismograph signal shows the noise that is generated as this magma flows up the conduit that connects to the surface. The signals are shown for high frequency (higher than 2Hz) and low frequency (less than 0.7Hz)
This is an example of the high frequency signal, showing the sudden stop.
Here is the low frequency signal, showing much less of a change.
What causes the noise? First, notice there are no sharp spikes visible. This means there is no rock cracking, which would show up as many small earthquakes. The lack of crackling shows that the conduit (and the dike underneath) is stable. The plumbing in this eruption is now well established and it is not in need of work. That will change only when the magma retreats from the conduit. We do see occasional rock falls on the steep inner side of the cone, giving a drawn-out signal lasting a minute or more. There are none in the plots shown here. Instead, the signal we see comes from magma moving through the conduit.
Magma can flow in two ways. The flow can be laminar, like honey creeping over a surface, or turbulent, like water in a steep river bed. Laminar flows are silent. The honey that is in touch with the surface is almost stationary, and the further it is from that surface the faster it flows. So you never have a fast flow directly over a corrugated surface. Turbulent flows are very different. The liquid is moving at different speeds and even in different directions and there is a lot of interaction between fast flows and surfaces. This seems the noise that we see. When the seismograph is noisy, something is causing turbulence in the flow. When it flat lines, the flow is undisturbed and laminar – or it has stopped.
Two flow types in the magma conduit. The right hand one causes a noisy signal on the seismograph.
Do be aware that the seismographs can pick up noise from other sources. Especially the low frequencies pick up movement over large areas, sometimes including visitors. (They also see large earthquakes across the entire world.) Wind can affect both plots: the plot thickens and becomes noisy. When it storms, eruptions become hard to see.
The signal does not tell us where the flow noise is located. It could be in a deep conduit, it could be on the surface or in a lava tube. If you look hard at the high frequency signal, squint a bit, and use a bit of imagination, you can see a hint of pulsing just before the end, lasting maybe 15 minutes with pulsing repeating over 3 ot 4 minutes. That can only be in the conduit, so I am assuming that the entire signal comes from the vertical pipe through which the magma rises to the surface.
What causes a flow to become laminar or turbulent? The smoothness of the surface is important. A river can be beautifully laminar where it is wide and has a smooth sandy floor, but turbulent where it becomes rocky or changes its width. The viscosity is also important. A fluid with high viscosity (internal stickiness or friction: think honey) tends to flow laminar, while a low viscosity fluid (such as water) very quickly becomes turbulent.
The magma in Fagradalsfjall is a type of basalt which has low viscosity. That is both because of its composition (it has few silicate crystals which easily stick together) and because of its high temperature. The lava channels show a fast flow, and this is indicative of a low viscosity lava. By the time it gets to the end points in Meradalir and Natthagi, it has cooled down and when flowing on the surface it behaves more viscous, although not nearly as much as rhyolite which just refuses to flow and sticks to the ground.
We would therefore expect that our magma can easily become turbulent. It doesn’t in the lava channels: even though the lava flows fast, it is still laminar. That is by and large also true underground, as long as it flows through wide pipes or tubes. Indeed, the seismographs was noisy when magma was still breaking through to the surface and did not yet flow, but they became rather quiet when the eruption was well established. The flow underground was also laminar. But later the eruption became fountainous and after that bubbly. And the noise went through the roof. There was turbulence in the magma. The fact that this happened while the lava was bubbling suggest that there was gas in the plumbing. The gas in the low viscosity magma caused turbulence. Where did the gas come from?
Let’s take a step back, or rather down. The magma rises up because it is buoyant: it has lower density than the surrounding rock. The hotter it is, the lower the density, and so hotter lava (if there is a choice) rises faster. As it rises, the depth becomes less and there is now less pressure from the weight of the rock above. The pressure in the magma decreases. At the same the temperature also drops a bit. To give some numbers, at 15-20 km depth where the magma was sourced, the pressure was around 400 Mpa (4 kbar if you prefer) and the temperature was around 1220 K. (The melt had actually formed even deeper, perhaps 25 km.) By the time it entered the dike, at 6 km depth, the pressure was down to 150MPa and the temperature around 1200 K, and at the point where the dike connected to the conduit, perhaps 2 km depth, they were 50 MPa and 1190 K respectively. The magma erupted at the surface with a temperature of 1170 K.
Source: AGU webinar on Fagradalsfjall: Dr. Eniko Bali. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3QW22b9_Jg
The origin of the gas lies in the changing conditions during the rise. Liquid magma can contain a limited amount of volatiles, such as water and CO2. If there is more of these then can dissolve into the magma, the excess is expelled and becomes a gas – a vapour inside the magma. The maximum amount that can dissolve in the liquid is called the solubility. It is different for each volatile. To give a rough number, basalt at 1200 K and a pressure of 50MPa can contain around 2% (by weight) of water. This amount decreases rapidly with pressure: by the time the pressure is down to 5 MPa (200 meters depth), the solubility is down to around 0.5%. It scales roughly as the square root of the pressure.
Temperature has the opposite effect: as the magma cools it can contain more water. You can see this effect when heating water in a pan. As the temperature rises, bubbles appear in the water. This is gas coming out of the liquid. Let the water cool and the bubble disappear again, taken up by the water. But in this magma the effect of temperature is fairly minor. The solubility of water scales roughly as 1/T (with the temperature T in Kelvin), and the temperature drops by only around 5% between 15 km depth and the surface. The pressure reduces much more dramatically, and it wins the battle. So while the magma rises, it tries to dry out and expel excess water. You may want to think of a volcanic eruption as a giant dryer.
Icelandic magma is pretty dry to begin with, but not that dry. At 0.8%, the Fagradalsfjall magma reaches a problem at 500 meters. At that depth it becomes saturated. As it rises further the magma begins to expel water and water vapour (steam) develops in the magma. The magma becomes gassy, and just like a human body after a good meal, it becomes windy and noisy.
CO2 goes through the same process as water but it does so at much greater depth. Mantle plumes may contain 1 % CO2 by weight, but this already turns into gas at a depth below 5 km. Some of this CO2 finds its own way to the surface and some remains as a gas inside the magma. By the time basaltic magma is at 1 km depth there is little dissolved CO2 left.
So water in Fagradalsfjall’s magma produces vapour during the last 500 meters of the ascend. This is not an easy process. A phase change (liquid to vapour or liquid to solid) needs something to hold on to. Pure water can in fact be cooled to well below freezing while still staying liquid. But shake it a bit and it freezes instantly. The water was supercooled. Air too can be supersaturated whilst not producing clouds . But when a passing plane disturbs it, instantly a contrail forms. It is the same with magma: it can become supersaturated with water but still reluctant to let it go. It takes time for the water to evaporate out of the liquid. If this is longer than the time it takes the magma to reach the surface, then the water will stay in the magma as an unwelcome passenger.
(I remember a camping trip (in Africa!) when after a chilly night we tried to pour water from a bottle into a cup. It froze on the way, mid-air. The water had become supercooled.)
When the water turns to gas, it forms small bubbles inside the magma in a process called bubble nucleation. Initially these are tiny, microscopic even. Nucleation is much easier when there are crystals in the magma: they provide a surface on which the bubbles can grow with ease. If there are no crystals, bubbles form with difficulty and the magma becomes supersaturated. But take supersaturated magma and add nucleation sites (crystals) and bubbles instantly form everywhere. If a magma rises rapidly, it will become supersaturated because the water has no time to respond to the decompression. But as the pressure continues to fall, at some point the supersaturation may become so high that nucleation accelerates anyway. Suddenly, gas is everywhere. The magma becomes fizzy and turbulent.
The bubbles are very buoyant and try to rise. But the magma is too viscous for that. It is worst for the smallest bubbles: friction with the magma locks them in place. Larger bubbles find it easier to rise, especially in a low viscosity magma. Let’s assume that the magma in the conduit rises at a speed of 1 m/s. That is a reasonable value for Fagradalsfjall: it gives the right flow rate (13 m3/s) for a conduit that is 4 meters across. The bubbles will move up a little bit faster, but not much faster. Even in Fagradalfjall they will only go faster by a few cm/s. The magma now becomes a mix of liquid and bubbles.
As more of the water becomes gas, the bubbles grow and take up a larger fraction of the volume. As the bubbles become mobile, they collide and can merge, or take in more water from the surrounding magma. And they also expand because the pressure is dropping as the magma rises. The bubbles can grow as large as a few centimeters. So as the magma approaches the surface, more and more of the volume is taken up by gas.
When bubbles take up more than half the volume, the bubbles merge into gas pockets. These are called ‘slugs’ and they take up the full diameter of the conduit, pushing the magma out of the way. If 90% of the volume is gas, then the slugs merge into a column of gas and magma is pushed to the side, but this may not happen in real volcanoes. In a bubble flow, the bubbles are stuck and rise with the magma. But in a slug flow, the slugs can rise rapidly because of their low density and because their smooth surface pushes the magma out of the way. The bubbly flow is sluggish and the slug flow is not.
What kind of speed can we reach? Here, the change of density is important. If half the volume is taken up with bubbles, the density of the mixture has halved. The magma now becomes very buoyant. If we start at 500 meters depth and use all the energy in the buoyancy compared to the surrounding rock to accelerate, by the time we reach the surface the velocity can reach 100 m/s. At that speed, a ballistic trajectory can reach 500 meters height. This is about what the highest fountains in early May reached. (The reality is of course much more complex. Much of the energy is lost in friction in the conduit and the slugs don’t travel anywhere near that fast. On the other hand the slugs still expand and this expansion greatly adds to the velocity.)
Slug flows are the dominant cause of strombolian eruptions. Each slug, when arriving at the surface, causes an explosion both because of its speed and because the slug expands fast in the low pressure around it. It throws out the surrounding magma (lava?) with it; it fountains, fragments and falls. If there is debris plug on top of the conduit and/or stagnant lava, the slug can become more explosive, and produce ash. If the conduit is open the fragments are ballistic lava. Fargradalsfjall always had an open conduit.
This degassing of the magma was the driving force during the fountaining phase, and the eruption changed because it began to degas much more. Originally, when the eruption first began, the magma did little degassing: this was the time of the constant outflow which we saw coming from the first cone, and later from the fissure. The magma at this time may have been less supersaturated, so that the bubbles formed slower and never merged into slugs.
There can be several possible causes for the change to slug formation. The magma may have changed, and had a higher supersaturation. This was also the time that the flow rate increased to its current value of 13 m3/s: this is possible with the same conduit if the density or viscosity of the magma became a bit less. The change allowed for faster bubble nucleation.
The eruption became extremely noisy at this time: because of rapid degassing the flow became bubbly on the ascend and therefore turbulent. The whole conduit, from 500 meter down to the surface degassed together. I envisage this as starting near the top. The sudden appearance of many bubbles drives out magma, and this reduces the pressure lower down where the magma now carries less weight. This decompression increases the supersaturation and allows bubbles to form here, and so on. A bubble formation front accelerates downward and the whole column turns first fizzy and then bubbly, before the rising bubbles begin to form slugs. It is just like opening an overpressured bottle of carbonated water.
(No slugs were harmed (or produced) in the making of these movies)
(An alternative idea is that the seismograph noise that we see comes from the bubbles themselves, as they implode, explode and merge, so that the turbulence is not in the flow but in the bubbles.)
Why the 10 minutes between the strombolian fountains? At a speed of 1 m/s, it takes ten minutes for the 500 meters of degassed magma to be replaced by the gas-rich magma from below, after which the process could repeat.
The pulsing that happened later was different. There were no high fountains, and there was no large acceleration. There were no slugs. Also, the seismographic noise happened mainly during the pulse whilst in between pulses the flow was much less noisy. The magma now was less supersaturated and fewer bubbles formed. The same process as before happened but the bubbles never reached the slug threshold of 50% by volume. The magma became bubbly but not sluggy. The bubbly flow still reduced the density of the magma, and this caused the level of the lava at the top to go up. The lava lake filled up and overflowed. The lava degassed over a couple of minutes as the gas reached the surface. This caused the apparent boiling of the lake. Once the gas became depleted, the density of the lava became higher and the level of the lake went down again. The lower noise of the seismograph now showed much less turbulence from bubbles. Over the next 5-10 minutes the magma in the conduit was replaced by fresh magma, and the degassing would start again.
This process explains why the flow rate of the lava did not change. The rate at which magma ascended from below remained constant all through these phases.
The current phase of long quiescent and active periods is different again. The fact that the seismographs are flat during the quiet period suggests that the flow becomes laminar without bubbles. There is no gas: the magma is not supersaturated. The density is therefore also higher and the level of the lava lower. We don’t know whether there still is any lava flow during these periods but it is possible it still flows -silently- through a deeper tube towards Meradalir, below the layer of the rubble that we can see in the cone. However, it is also possible that the magma in the conduit stops flowing and the eruption interrupts. It depends on how buoyant the magma below the conduit is.
Slowly the low frequency noise increases. A bit of degassing is beginning but the volume of the gas remains small. As the degassing increases the density of the conduit decreases, but only a little because there is less water available for degassing. The magma begins to rise, and the pressure below begins to drop. This causes some supersaturation and slowly more gas comes out of the magma and forms bubbles. The density decreases as before, the lava level rises and the cone overflows. The process is slow enough (several hours) that the magma is always in equilibrium, able to shed the excess water and avoiding supersaturation. The new situation with the magma a little bubbly but not very much is stable: it will continue as long as nothing disturbs it. But a rock fall at the top or a slowing of the overflow will increase the weight below, and the bubbles begin to dissolve into the magma. There is a little bit of pulsing at this time, but with a shorter period of a few minutes. This suggests that the gas formed only higher up in the conduit. This is of course what you would expect if the is less water in the magma: the depth at which it become supersaturated becomes less. Once the gas is gone, the situation is stable again.
The volcano therefore can have two very different modes which are both stable: one with fizz and one without.The change from one to the other is unpredictable. In physics, this can give rise to a chaotic system with periods of constant behaviour followed by a random large change. If you are interested, look up the Lorentz attractor.
The changing eruption does not necessarily mean that the flow rate has decreased. However, the supersaturation of the magma is changing. Perhaps there is less water. There may also be a more prosaic reason. The eruption has added a lot of weight to the area. The pressure in the conduit is therefore a bit higher than before, and this can reduce the supersaturation.
What will happen next? The current situations is unlikely to last long. The long periods without lava suggests the eruption is on the edge, and could easily stop completely. If that happens (not unlikely), the conduit may block, the walls will survive and the government will declare victory and call elections. But if there is still flow from the mantle, then the pressure from below will increase again and the magma will look for another way out. In that case, after a while the rock-breaking earthquakes will restart and the eruption may eventually resume in a new location.
This may well be the end. It may also be the start of something new.
Albert, July 2021
I am still trying to learn how to write short posts. The posts seem to have a will of their own. Enjoy!
Where there’s a will, there’s a wall (of text). But very well done – thanks!
Don’t mind in the least Albert – thanks
This is a really great post Albert. Much appreciated, especially your time to explain about the bubbles.
Well.. For me you can write a book and i would happy read. 🙂 So no need learn write short posts..
very nice.
I just reread the article in a more thorough way. Now the behaviour of the lava I saw and filmed makes a lot more sense, thank you!
Albert as his predictably creative, educational and literary self. The general chemistry and physics of 60 years ago coming back into focus and answering once again, the long ago question of ‘why do I have to know this??” Many thanks.
Albert, just a small and kind suggestion from someone who does this stuff for a living.
Your writing is great, but for the digital environment, readability is drastically improved when an article is separated into more frequent sections with headings separating those sections. You don’t need to change your actual writing, but adding headings between the sections to denote different subtopics is a small, but very powerful way to improve readability for long-form content.
I hope you don’t take this as a critique on your writing, which is great. It’s just that for a digital audience where attention spans are short, not including headings as attention grabbers and waypoints to understand the subtopics usually results in higher dropoff rates and less reading of the full article.
For me the length is perfect, everything neatly explained – even why the sun rises 😉
Thank you very much!
Thank you Albert! Nice clear explanations and I now feel I have a much better grasp on what I have been seeing!
Albert, what viscosity would you assign to the lava, what density, what velocity and how rough would you guess the conduit is?
Yes, of course I will work out an approx reynolds number, as I presume you have already done.
Pretty well exactly as I have been imagining it, by the way.
The other important point is how the melt gets to the conduit deep down.
For the numbers I used the Reynolds number came out as around 200 but it is quite dependent on the choice for viscosity (I used 50-100 which may be on the high side) and the choice for conduit diameter. The equation I used is Re = (rho/mu)*(pi/4)*(Q/D) where Q is the flow rate and D the diameter. For rho, you can guess 2500. This makes the flow laminar. I did not calculate it for the bubbly flow.
Hi Albert,
hmm, yes, hypercritically depends on viscosity, which visually (ie this looks twice as viscous as that) tends to be a factor of 10 out.
With water at mu of 10^-3 Pa.s, and the way the lava sloshes about in the crater looks closer to water than syrup (room temp) to me but the figures given in papers suggest that 50-100 is what should be used. Sadly there are few common examples in this viscosity zone, and they then to be thixotrophic (eg ketchup) which doesn’t help.
Personally I would put the viscosity of the fresh lava closer to 10 (or less), which would reflect a hotter lava.
If you put in 10, then the conduit diameter becomes a bit less (to keep the right flow rate). The difference in density between the rocks and the magma is also important for the flow rate, so I can trade this off against the diameter. The bottom line is that to keep the flow laminar under these conditions requires that the density of the magma and the rock are quite close. It gives a Reynolds number around 500-2000.
Thank you for this excellent exposition.
Thanks for ineresting explanation model. Could not be shorter without loosing essentials
The lava in fagradalshraun is very very very very fluid .. the most fluid lava thats been captured on camera in Iceland. Near the vent its really like a liquid metal flood
That was my thought, when absolutely fresh very close to water and thus IMHO you were always right about the high vent temperature. Trouble is the viscosity varies exceptionally rapidly (order of magnitude)over a 100C temp range. It sloshes round in the cauldron like water not like treacle.
Great post, Albert!
An excellent summation of cause and events.
https://twitter.com/BBCAmos/status/1412681962746265601
Some great capability on display from
@iceyefi
this morning. The European company is now operating sufficient radar satellites in orbit (14) to run a tightly controlled daily ground-track repeat across target scenes, eg #Fagradalsfjall #volcano. https://bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-57742138 #SAR
I think we will see some orange stuff soon.. Has been the longest period of no (apparent) eruptive activity since the beginning of the eruption.. clearly seen in the tremor.
https://twitter.com/krjonsdottir/status/1412708274303033346
The tremor has dropped, I don’t think any orange will be seen tonight
Albert, great article. Thank you. Answers a lot of questions.
Until he went dormant, Watterson erupted spectacularly.
https://news.arizona.edu/story/methane-plumes-saturns-moon-enceladus-possible-signs-life?fbclid=IwAR2jhm8D94mkxc7lLRAPqhvwy0mBUSgDZ4BLa4LVCQAca9G0zx9Wzkh5dII
Methane found in Enceladus oceans
Perhaps There is life in hydrothermal vents there
Chemistry rather than life, I think. Methane is quite common in the outer solar system
Totally agree. It should also be considered that life formed under totally different conditions from those existing today.
The news in 2020-2021 have showed me these things, from harmless scientific speculations to more crazy conspiracies:
1.Bacteria could be floating high in Venus atmosphere?
2. Methane microbes in Mars?
3. Methane microbes in Enceladus?
4. Oumuamua could be an alien artifact
5. UFOs have been widely seen by US military
6. Trump made a deal with the aliens
I think there has been a big shift in the last couple of years is opening up to the probability of alien life, both microbial and intelligent, and being comfortable with that.
Eventually a discovery will be made that confirms one of the above. And it will be a life shattering event.
The thing is that life can adopt perhaps less usual and visible forms.
I mean, you land in the middle of central Iceland.
You see a volcanic landscape, with rocks and without any vegetation.
Plenty of geothermal springs and a blue sky above.
Is Iceland inhabited by life forms?
Perhaps there is bacteria in those geothermal springs or in crevisses in the snow and rocks, but I don’t see it
Arctic conditions occupy a significant percentage of Earth land.
I then land in the middle of Sahara desert.
Is there life there?
I don’t see any life forms.
Deserts occupy close to a third of Earth land area.
So at least 30% of Earth looks devoid of life forms, at first glance.
It might be similar in many other places in the solar system.
Until you find that lonely desert succulent or that lonely Icelandic bird….
Life can adapt to many environments. But it can it form there? Life exists in the desert because it came from somewhere less inhospitable.
Basically from the oceans. So life like we know it needs water.
But it is unlikely to have formed in the open ocean. Life requires a chemical imbalance, therefore a barrier. You don’t get those in the open ocean. Darwin thought foamy pools and that is still a plausible suggestion.
These is a tendency to think like has to be along the lines of terrestrial life. This requires liquid water and some energy source (and not much more). However there is no reason why life should not run on different chemical systems at all. I think the criterion is adequate self replicating structure with energy manipulation.
Also the ‘habitable’ zone is actually rather wide when you consider planets can be small (mercury-sized) to large very many earth masses, with atmospheres that can be thin mars/earth or deep like venus. Clearly a large planet a long way from the sun with a deep atmosphere can have an earthlike surface temperature, whilst a small planet in earth orbit with little atmosphere will be inhospitable to earthlike life.
Finding life elsewhere is not earthshattering, but entirely expected, the only question is when.
A well-consolidated analysis based upon objectivity. For the faith-based, it will be a reaffirmation of their convictions. From that will rise the controversies, even if Klaatu is the bearer of his truth, his gift, his LEO, and his warning.
I.e. prior to the Oxygen crisis where cyanobacteria killed off much of existing life? (2.4–2.0 Ga)
{and caused the formation of many “red bed” iron deposits since iron could then “rust” with the presence of oxygen}
Enceladus haves an ocean of water under its Ice.. its keept liquid by intense tidal heating from Saturn.
Enceladus Haves a rocky sillicate center which South pole haves a really hot hydrothermal venting.
Water is really warm there and its 10 kilometers deep over a hot rocky seafloor
The chance for primitive life is really good in that ocean .. : )
Life in the tidaly heated moon Europa is chemosyntectic.. living on deep Sea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents that blasts out energy rich chemicals in the icey depths
Eneceladus maybe hot enough at tidaly heated South Pole to have black smokers
Thank you very much for all you do!!!
While I think I get the “slug concept”…my tummy was telling me that the “big fountains” resulted from multiple decompression bulbs/chambers in the conduit, i.e. the “big ones” were simply harmonic pulses. Could that have been the case?
It is hard to be sure. The problem is that instrumentation in the right place to tell would be destroyed in the event! Strombolian eruptions are normally considered associated with slugs (terrible name, really). Can a resonance do the same? For instance, monster waves in the ocean form in that way. The regularity of the tall fountains argues against it. Monster waves are one-off and don’t repeat at fixed times. However, the lava lake has a size and a resonance frequency, and any disturbance in the right place and with the right size could set up a resonating wave. You can’t easily get a harmonic pulse in the conduit, I think, other than the degassing pulse so it would have to be in the lava lake at the top. My feeling is that a resonance can add to the power of the fountain but can’t explain the high regular fountaining.
See water in a U-tube for basic resonance in the conduit. The requirement is vertical movement at the surface and although it looks like little is seen, the dimensions of the vent at the surface are quite large. 30m of vertical movement is a lot of lava compared to 13m^3/s ave flow.
Amazing things one can do with a U bend. But if one forms in the conduit, the extreme gas pressure that can be reached will tend to straightens things out, I think
The usage of ‘slugs’ intrigues me; rather than the creature, I’m thinking of the slang for home made rifle and pistol pellets, or a gulp of liquid, a mouthful.
Me too.
Taking a slug of the first tea of the day – luvvacuppa
When I think of slugs, I think of drowning them in (er, enticing them with) a pan of beer to keep them off the garden.
The faf drumplot now shows a signal similar to the pulsing of a month or so ago, with a bunch of added snap, crackle, and pop, and has done for about the past 7 hours, but the cams just show a quietly smoldering crater.
I don’t suppose I could convince anyone to pop a drone over the rim and take a look-see inside?
I would love to pop my drone over, but I would need to book a ticket to Iceland, travel to the airport, fly over, isolate for 12 hrs, drive to the car park, walk for an hour, fly the drone, collect the footage, return to somewhere with wifi, upload to my laptop then upload to the internet …….. I think things might have changed by then !!!
Some one needs to go and kick it back to life
Anyone got 50p for the meter?
I’m lonely now. No volcano to keep me company. We’ve been going steady for nearly four months and now today it stands me up. I keep refreshing hoping that it is just teasing me but no. This is worse than sitting by the landline in the old days waiting for that phone call. 🙁
You are not alone, my F5 key is also blanking me
You can watch Taal emit steam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RI8PgPAAeQ
Someone in a comments section somewhere referred to it as “Evil Loch Ness” and now I hear that every time I watch a video of Taal.
Red hot lava is back in the cone, at least that’s what the red glow on the fog indicates, checked at 11:29 pm UTC, today Wed July 7th, 2021 see https://www.visir.is/sjonvarp/beint
Your wonderful essay, beautifully explains the eruption. For my new to geology brain, this eruption is a metaphor of life. I liken it to a puppy. You alluded to that in the caption for the first vent – the adorable.
The first phase of the eruption was a cute and relatively harmless puppy. But as time has passed, it has grown and got A LOT bigger and the recent ash cloud suggests it is not quite as cute and harmless anymore. If the eruption carries on, how much bite will it get. This one cannot be tamed.
My first video of my trip to Iceland has just finished uploading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrWAGUs9Ptk
It shows how the volcano looked on July 2nd when it was relatively calm.
It might take a few minutes until the full 4k resolution is available…
sorry, I made a mistake, the video shows the volcano on July 1st – need to re-render it and upload it again, sorry…
Youtube says that this video is private and I need a login password
See my other post for the updated URL. Sorry for the mess, I guess the lack of sleep is showing it’s consequences.
Great post – thanks, Albert! 🤓
It can take a deceptively long time to make a complex subject seem relatively simple, as you have done. Thanks for investing your time in us. Again.
Ok, second try, – my first video of my trip to Iceland has just finished uploading: https://youtu.be/QP5dbfrhzH0
It shows how the volcano looked on July 1st when it was relatively calm.
The video is currently uploading and should be available a few minutes after my posting.
“He’s been gone for such a long time
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
Now he’s back and things’ll be fine
(Hey-la-day-la my boyfriend’s back)
Yay! There’s a lovely orange glow and it looks like the cauldron is a boiling.
This one might be a hum dinger!
Someone just flew a drone straight over it. It took me a minute to work out that it wasn’t a bird. At least I think it was a drone. Although it could have been a small dragon.
At 4am this morning on MBL a strong red glow over the crater indicating that lava is there below
So fingers crossed 🤞🏼 as I’m visiting the site tomorrow
Looks like the Little Mountain That Could is back in business. 🙂
It appears that our fissure eruption has literally run out of gas.
Requiesce in pace!
Its a bit early to say its all over. Give it a month maybe, or even a week come to that.
faf tremor is still slowly building, but below “eruption level”. Haven’t given up hope, but it’s slow.
If this is indeed “The End”, then the various walls and dams have done a wonderful job holding back the lava (and where overrun,deepening it).
I’m hoping that the past is a guide to the future, and that this is just the first of the long-awaited 800 year Reykjanes eruption series.
Btw are there any Icelanders on this site? Reading wiki for descriptions of the Laki eruptions of 1783/4, which killed 25% of the population, there were no Icelandic sources quoted. Although survival must have been the main preoccupation, surely some literate Icelanders must have described what happened? Clergymen perhaps?
Actually the eruption was hardly known outside of Iceland. Our knowledge comes mainly from Jon Steingrimsson, a priest who kept a detailed diary and who himself suffered a lot through the eruption. The death toll of 25% is not actually well known. It comes from comparing the population of Iceland before and after. There may have been migration out of Iceland – and/or a baby boom!
https://www.volcanocafe.org/laki-the-making-of-a-fire/
Thank you. The wiki quotes are from Ben Franklin and Gilbert White, who noticed the strange “dry mist” over the Northern Hemisphere. Would have been nice to have some from Steingrimsson himself, some are available in links below.
Politics and geology again – some think Laki was a contributory factor towards the French Revolution, just as Tambora caused “The Year Without A Summer” and associated food riots thirty years later.
https://ultimatehistoryproject.com/the-eruption-of-laki.html
https://www.medievalist.com/articles/strongjn-versus-the-volcano-an-eighteenth-century-icelandic-priests-account-of-a-moment-of-crisisstrong
The book ‘island on fire’ gives a good overview. I guess people in Iceland were too busy surviving to write down detailed accounts. In Europe and the US, the strange weather was noticed but it was not known to have been caused by Iceland. The impact of volcanoes on weather became known only much later. Even for Tambora, the year without summer was not associated with the volcano until a century later. And for Tambora too we have no reports from people within sight of the eruption. There wasn’t a lot of writing done outside of the centres of government and religion, and eye witness accounts require that the witness survives. Noone within sight of Tambora did. Go back further, Eldgja was worse than Laki and coincided with the end of the migration to Iceland – not accidentally I expect. But there is not a single report of the eruption itself.
“The Laki Eruption and the Fire District” by Snorri Baldursson is worth a look. In Icelandic and English with some stunning images.
Interesting video about the experiences of Solange Duhamel and Christopher Hamilton with the Fagradalsfjall eruption that started during their stay in Iceland https://youtu.be/aJwZFWRf0DM
Does anyone have the link to the GPS or other live feed deformation data? I lost the link 🙁
is it this one? http://brunnur.vedur.is/gps/multiplot-rnes.html
or this one? http://brunnur.vedur.is/gps/reykjanes_rt.html
More the one Carl said was showing deflation. It is to me unlikely such a deep source would just stop, not so suddenly. I expect this source will erupt again, maybe at Fagradalsfjall but also maybe at Svartsengi or Krysuvik, where eruptions are a lot faster and more dangerous. The lava at Oggmundahraun looks as though it flowed like water, a flood basalt in miniature.
http://brunnur.vedur.is/gps/reykjanes.html
At some poimt it seemed there was some deflation detected, but that has ceased or even turned around a bit. I wouldn’t call it inflation, it is minor, nothing much really. The movement towards the eruption is still there though. I think we must keep in mind there is not the cooling part of the initial dyke only; the surrounding (wide) area has the volcanic systems (5 or so in a row) and the two plates moving with many fissures.
The gps movement is difficult to interpret (amateur here!).
This gps site gives a better insight what happens.
https://notendur.hi.is/~hgeirs/iceland_gps/rnes/rnes_400p.html
I thought I’d lost the links, but I did have this one bookmarked after all.
http://brunnur.vedur.is/gps/reykjanes.html
Question: do we know whether magma is still feeding in to the dyke from the mantle? Given that the given rate of eruption recently was higher than the (estimated?) feed into the dyke, it’s not surprising that we now have deflation & a hiatus of one sort or another. But is stuff still coming up from down below? In my innocence I’d imagine that that’s what determines whether the current eruption over or just changing state again.
Yes, that will probably be the determining factor. Problem is that there is no way to know if magma is still rising or not, there is no way to accurately detect that, unless the magma column was visible inside the crater and seen to be rising.
The tremor chart has been slowly going up over the past 2.5 days, if it keeps going up linearly, it should recover in 4 or 5 days. I doubt it is dead, just overdrawn its account. If the eruption has used up the rift supply built before the eruption and early on when rates were lower, then it will either have to erupt a smaller proportion of the time or at a lower rate, both of which will hurt the viewing experience.
This article in Iceland News gives an interesting explanation about the lack of activity since Tuesday night
https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/nature_and_travel/2021/07/06/what_s_most_remarkable_about_the_eruption/
D’oh! Of course. I suppose it was measured before the eruption by the amount of uplift/sideways deformation? Which obviously isn’t happening now… if anything, the lava field will be pushing down.
If the current fissure is quiet now, when do we have to start to keep an eye open for possible new fissures?
It has been coughing up some brown clouds a few times now and the tremor plots are getting noisier so might get a show later tonight.. but who knows 😀
I think that anybody that has just travelled all the way to Iceland for the eruption will be somewhat deflated.
This is what would happen to me LOL
I hope it continues erupting, poor souls…
Thank you – I go tomorrow so keeping fingers crossed that fog clears and lava emerges
RE:”I hope it continues erupting, poor souls…”
I’d be inclined to support that if the effluent posed absolutely no secondary threat. In the present circumstances, where electronic infrastructure, roads and private personal property are concerned, those needs outweigh that of entertainment. Consider the cost in Hawaii’s ERZ across the past 40 years. Were it to end today, I would be satisfied. There’s enough for politics and science to pick apart for years to come.
That is a fair point. Of course the eruption might just move to another area. If it goes north on the original dike, it will find itself a large deserted and harmless area, perfect for visual entertianment. In the end, our opinions have no bearing on what will happen though.
Your observations are clear with respect to what is understood about Iceland, or Hawaii for that matter. Last night, I spoke to a customer service representative and she told me she was in Manila. I told her that we were keeping an eye on Lake Taal for her. When I told her where ‘we’ were, all around the world, she laughed. I’m simply exhibiting my continued dismay at the ‘Lock and loaded and ready to travel’ ‘Hope it lasts until I get there’ mindset.’
https://www.itemfix.com/v?t=nrzqwr
Hot bubbles rise from bottom of sea days after Taal Volcano erupted.
Its not over till the large person sings.
Meanwhile, Etna is blowing fireworks.
RE:”:Meanwhile, Etna is blowing fireworks”
Any speculation among the group as to what access to Crater Silvestri will be like when and if Etna finally settles down? That’s where the paying cruise ship tourists [moi next June] end up. Haven’t time for more extensive exploration.
Crater Silvestri is further south, I dont think this one actually has a formal name other than SEC. Probably it will form into a steep cone, until either it reaches the angle of repose on the Valle del Bove and possibly collapses, or there is a big flank eruption that collapses it. Or both. But neither is likely in the immediate time, the high activity of 2000 was not immediately before the flank eruption, took a few months I believe.
SEC is though the new summit, Etna is taller than it used to be last year, and possibly its tallest recorded height 🙂
I am concerned by the fluidity of the lava though, its not extremely low but every recent paroxysm has seen lava leak out of the base, and it flows very fast near the vent, its way hotter than the stuff erupting a few years ago. Would be a big problem to have a rift open now, something like 1981, that was almost a lava flood, if not in volume it certainly was in intensity.
This map should help with crater names (you get one of these when you do the guided climb up and round the craters)
Crater Silvestri is low down, nowhere near the active vents, but as with all volcano’s, anything is possible
While we all watch faf…
Some Ingenuity colour imagery from Flight 9 arrived today. Here’s the Seitah region from the air as Ingenuity prepared to fly over the dunes taking a shortcut not available to Perseverance. The helicopter team also prove they can tilt far enough to see the horizon without the aid of a flight anomaly 🙂
Image cropped and processed from https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasappere/51299490124/ based on original raw image.
Ingenuity is now over 400 metres from Perseverance.
Is that orange in the crater ?
Preliminary 5.9 earthquake just south of Lake Tahoe.
The quake was widely felt. My wife reported the shaking all the way from San Francisco.
Very nicely seen on the FAF LF seismograph
Pink glow on Visir camera…
https://www.visir.is/sjonvarp/beint
https://imgur.com/a/cIeNRlL
Yes, I just looked in and saw an unmistakable glow of lava. I wish the vog would clear!
The glow is tantalizing, but the new batch of lava seems to be too shy to come out…. 🙁
There is definitely very hot lava in the crater, but there isn’t enough flow to push it out. I suspect that this will be the state of the volcano the next few days.
Is a lot like early Pu’u O’o, would glow at night without erupting for weeks, at one point nearly 2 months, that could happen here if there is enough space underground to accumulate magma. I expect a rather impressive eruption afterwards 🙂
Grimsvötn continues to inflate …
And is pretty much the only Icelandic volcano thats in constant inflation because of a stable magma supply: the Geothermal output is the most intense in entire Iceland there too.
Will be fun to see what it will do in the comming years: perhaps another 2004 .. who knows
Really large Sulfur emissions was reported in spring 2020
Grimsvötn is certainly a much more massive system than Fagradalsfjall – Krysuvik is
But summit eruptions are feed from a shallow magma chamber unlike .. fagradalshraun
But Fagradalshraun is hotter than Grimsvötns shallow chamber magmas
An effusive summit Grimsvötn eruption ( surtsey Island in caldera ) may look similar to the hotter versions of Etnas lavas.. 1998 and 2004 where quite cool and viscous thoelitic basalts
After 2011 temperatures rised and geothermal energy increased dramaticaly, suggesting a sourge in magma supply from the depths
I wonder what Grimsvötn will turn into in the future .. depends alot on the Hotspot supply and its strenght. There is some geochemical clues that Iceland hotspot is currently getting stronger
How did Grimsvötn look before the Sakursunarvatn caldera plinians? Was it a stratovolcano before the huge nested caldera complex?
Today Grimsvötn kind of look like a very flat shield volcano .. with a huge caldera complex. Grimsvötn is mostly made of hydroclastic materials, pillow lava, and ash
I wonder the same thing about Katla, before Eldgja. There is nothing else in the Holocene record even close to big enough to explain the caldera other than Eldgja, but it is also too active that the caldera as it is now would not have been filled in since its formation if it was an old structure. There are also a number of radial eruptions, some of significant size, that erupted north of Myrdalsjokull in the mid Holocene, but there is no way an eruption that big would be able to happen without gravity involved. I think Katla could have been a wide (mostly) basaltic stratovolcano before Eldgja, something a lot like Etna but glaciated.
Grimsvotn I think as we see it today is mostly younger than those tephras, Laki had to have a lot of gravitational potential to happen so probably before 1783 there was at least a taller mountain, the caldera that is most active today I think formed in the eruptions of those years. I recall before the eruption at Oraefajokull destroyed it all, the flat plain outwash of Vatnajokull was fertile, which implies it was not regularly flooded, which would in turn suggest the source of those floods – the caldera lake of Grimsvotn – didnt exist back then. Only event plausible to create it in the time since was Laki, just it is hard to actually prove it without witnesses, probably a caldera formation would have been slow like we saw at Kilauea or Bardarbunga and no way anyone would have climbed the glacier back then in those times with what was going on around them…
Grimsvötn have accumulated alot of magma since 1783 and looks like after 2011 .. magma accumulation have really speed up. The caldera complex is constantly inflating…now.
Almost no earthquakes either during that process so Grimsvötn is hot an open conduited
The caldera roof on the shallow magma chamber is about 2700 meters thick 2,7 kilometers
It haves to break that roof first
Would seem possible, I think a while back Carl said a few km3 of ice had been melted since 2011, so maybe up to 1 km3 of magma added in that time. But 2011 was also a big eruption and those are usually not followed immediately by another.
I guess we will probably find out soon though, probably it will just be another ash cloud followed by a glacier flood, the caldera I think is too big to fill up so fast, so no effusive subaerial stage 🙁
The magma chambers at Grimsvötn ( are quite large for being a basaltic volcano )
The uppermost chamber holds up to 50 km3 of Thoelitic melt.. with an upper ”eruption feeding top” thats a pressurized gassy lens. Its this upper melt top that feeds eruptions .. when its Re – charged enough with gas. The melt part of the this chamber inflates as more melt materials arrive from below.
The lower parts of the chamber contains melt and more crystals towards the bottom
An open conduit connects that complex with seismic free inflation
The deeper magma chambers are much bigger than that
Are you sure it is 50 km3? That is a lot of magma. To keep it from evolving it needs to stay hot, so needs a very large heat source. That is the confusing thing about Iceland, it is a powerful plume but seems none of the individual volcanoes actually is quite hot enough to get this, and if any of them are close it would be Bardarbunga not Grimsvotn. There is a very clear hydrothermal system at Grimsvotn, that will conduct heat much better, an even better example of that is at Yellowstone. But the volcanoes with highest heat flow have no hydrothermal system, Kilaueas summit, for example, it only has one when it cools down, its usually much too hot. The heat flow there especially when there is a lava lake is almost unbelievable. I recall even when Holuhraun was going full force Kilauea always had a higher heat flux, and its heat flux went down in 218, lava lakes are truly portals to hell as placid as they can look at the surface.
I can see 50 km3 or even much more for deep magma storage, but shallow storage likely not more than 20 km3. Holuhraun created a caldera of 2 km3 volume and erupted 1.4 km3 DRE. If you add a 0 to those numbers you get very close to Laki, and the southern active caldera at Grimsvotn, so similar ratio. The other calderas there probably are inactive and older, maybe there is not yet a single magma body. I would expect there will be a long time before another Laki, millennia, certainly not imminent. Next rift in this area will be on Bardarbunga, or maybe north/east of Hekla, these actually could be the same tectonic structure theres not much information.
A very Impressive caldera complex thats 14 km wide!
Thats as wide as the Chicxlulub Asteorid
Grimsvötns caldera is also wide enough to fit Etnas upper edifice inside it.
Acually Grimsvötn is 3 .. 5 kilometers wide basalt calderas thats formed themselves in a mickey mouse pattern. ( so the shallow chambers at Grimsvötn is sizable ) the main active magma body is in the South caldera
This is how I envisage the bubbly magma
🙂 Yes. look at that for some time even troll apears with glowing eyes 😉
In the fog, a rocky outcrop will very easily look like a troll.
Come the sun, the fog boils off and the rocks are exposed for what they are. Suddenly, the sun has turned the troll into stone,
In the fog small columns and stores seem huge, until you get there.
I have only ever dared walking in fog in the english lake district with wainwright at hand, and even then it difficult.
[PS Wainwright is the only travel guide book to take when walking in the lakes away from crowds]
PS Tremor rising ….
Next time I hopes Grimsvötn produces a Mayotte sized show in its caldera : ) *wont happen*
Or perhaps .. thats more likley to happen in Kilaūeas summit where magma supply also is very very high. Halema’uma’u coud produce a mayotte with its huge supply ..
Kilaūea is probaly most capable of this… a mayotte event in its summit
Chad whats your opinion: Kilauea coud do that soon?
Could do it now if the rift was inactive, but not so fast. Pu’u O’o was as big as Mayotte, after all. Aila’au shield was around this too. Observatory shield I suspect was many shields stacked up over each other. Even at the low end 1 m3/s eruption rate over the 500 years the complex was constructed that is 16 km3 of lava, and if it was at the same rate as Pu’u O’o, which seems more likely, the complex could be as much as 5x that, 75 km3, which would make it bigger than all of the Icelandic shields I believe. Probably a fairly safe bet is 50 km3. On top of that if Kilauea and Mauna Loa are fed from Hualalai that means one can think of it as a single mega volcano, so the supply rate is always 0.2 km3 a year, just where it erupts alternates. I am exited for part III 🙂
ERZ seems to be very open today though, perhaps to no surprise as the conduit was scoured open by a flow rate suddenly going from 4 m3/s to over 100 m3/s in literally an instant, during the big quake. Near future I think big eruptions will be there instead, summit will fill up rapidly to the point the deep pit is gone but not overflow. ERZ from Makaopuhi to Heiheiahulu could see large eruptions, probably of similar magnitude to the first part of 2018, flood lava eruptions. Makaopuhi could fill with lava and do a nyiragongan eruption down in Puna…
Kilaūea is a mega volcano already as it is .. and may become the largest volcano in entire Cenozoic in
150 000 years in the future ..
She will grow to a 100 s of km long snow covered behemoth… perhaps becomming a huge 6500 meters tall snowy shield wall that strecth the entire horizon seen from distance.
A gigantic long snow covered behemoth is her future. From her pressed down seafloor base she may become almost 30 km tall.
Still Im curious.. What will happen to Grimsvötn in same timespann If Icelands Hotspot keeps its current path of development
I think Hector will have more to say about Kilauea, but it does sound like it could become a lot like Mauna Kea and Haleakala, towering over the others, though by that point it will be more evolved and quite different to its present behavior.
I think Icelandic volcanoes never get gigantic, they have massive rifts but the volcanoes on the rifts are not bigger. That is probably why the calderas look so disproportionate, they are not really much bigger than the greater caldera on Kilauea but that sits on a volcano physically much bigger than most, where Grimsvotn is a small volcano with a big influence.
Kilauea is already gigantic when you put in the submarine parts. Tens of thousands of km3 that is already… and her ERZ rift is quite a bit longer than Mauna Loas
Apparently it is around 10,000 km3, because most of the lava underneath its summit area was erupted by Mauna Loa so technically doesnt count even though today it would be controlled tectonically by Kilauea. It is though a pretty arbitrary difference, and it also might not actually be a difference at all if Hector’s recent posts are to be taken, as Mauna Loa and Kilauea would both technically be the same volcano, and both satellites of Hualalai. I was initially sceptical but it really seems to make quite a lot of sense, and does also make sense of the Pahala swarm. It would be strange to have Kilauea be fed primarily by a source so far away when the others are supposedly fed vertically, and Pahala is also not on the Loa or Kea trend lines.
Does also explain why Loihi is not very active or big yet as it is not connected to Kilauea or Mauna Loa, it might be closest to the plume in theory but the vertical axis of the plume is not necessarily the area of greatest magma generation, likely that lies further back dragged by the movement of the crust, so the majority of magma still goes to the volcanoes on the Big Island even if the ultimate source is possibly back near Hualalai. Loihi will though likely join the Island, Kilauea will grow south probably quite a lot, and Loihi will probably also get quite big, it is unlikely they wont merge. I do hope next time there is an eruption it is observed directly, Loihi might erupt really hot lava.
I do wonder, if Hualalai is near the current major source of magma on the Big Island it should have a very strong CO2 and He signature.
RE: “Kilaūea is a mega volcano already as it is….”
Do you see Lo’ihi merging with the southern coast of Kilauea in that time frame to form a larger land mass?
I looked in on the cameras. Good grief. It reminds me of a Welsh open cast slate mine I once visited. Except it’s less wet and foggy.
Dinorwic? Blaenau Ffestiniog?
Sadly, long ago and I cannot remember. But I do remember the apocalyptic look to it all! 🙁
😂
Aftershock sequence of the Antelope Valley 6.0 earthquake. Very vigorous…typical of Basin and Range extensional (normal) faulting.
https://postimg.cc/bdKxm9gn
And here is a wider view of the quake that shows it’s proximity to several other notable (and ongoing) swarms in California and western Nevada.
The Antelope Valley quake occurred with the Walker Lane, which we discussed in some detail following the powerful Ridgecrest sequence. Note the continuing aftershocks SE of Ridgecrest, heightened activity near Mammoth Mountain and nearby Long Valley as well as continuing aftershocks in the Mina earthquake zone. Tough to ignore a general trend in the alignment of the all the activity, which may be suggesting a future large shock along fault sections that have not yet unlocked.
I should have noted in my post above, that there have been several notable shocks directly under Lake Tahoe within the last 2-3 months (as well as some outside Truckee) that do not show up on the above map. Lake Tahoe is only ~ 35 miles away from the Antelope Valley epicenter….and it’s possible that there is some type of linkage between the swarms. When the Lake Tahoe swarm began in April, there was (and continues) to be discussion on whether the recent widespread spike in activity is a possible harbinger of a larger quake…and with the new AL earthquake only 35 miles away, it looks like these prognostications may be bearing fruit.
It seems MBL have changed the goddamn closeup url again. Does anyone know the new one? Or why they keep doing that? RUV doesn’t change the urls for any of their streams … really, RUV could stand to copy MBL’s camera technology and maintenance practices, and MBL could stand to copy RUV’s methods of management of their Youtube account so as to stop breaking everyone’s freaking bookmarks every few days.
Still works for me.
Is this the one you’re looking for? It’s difficult to see is it actually recording. In fact, it’s a bit weird with the dead straight line stretching between the two sides.
The dead straight line across has disappeared now making a liar of me.
They put this online
Nice High Altitude drone footage coming into Natthagi from the ocean ..
Overview of Natthagi lava field ..
Shots of an empty and plugged Rag-Nar ..
Video shot on a very clear July 2nd 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXiNTgreKaQ
Thats a many days old video
At https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2021/07/09/enntha_virkni_i_gosinu/ “Still activity in the eruption”.
The vent isn’t dead yet! Screenshot 01:28am UK time.
Where is a working Youtube vent closeup camera?
Try this link
I think… I think I’ve seen a couple splashes of lava as the fog has cleared a bit. Around 2am Iceland time.
https://www.visir.is/sjonvarp/beint
That is not a Youtube link.
This one is on Youtube.
Thanks.
The MBL Closeup timelapse for today shows glimpses of lava activity between midnight and around 3 AM.
Sorry that was for yesterday, GMT. The Visir #2 camera shows a glow right now 2021-07-10 02:12:00.
It’s 3:50 AM Iceland time and the lava is splashing about pretty frequently. With a bit of luck we may get a bigger show (i.e. lava flowing outside of the crater) sometime later today? How exciting!
The splashes are good to see on the visir link:
https://www.visir.is/sjonvarp/beint
Also, the Langihryggur cam gets a good view occasionally between lots of foggy frames:
http://brunnur.vedur.is/myndir/listi/webcam_langihryggurN.html
I love seeing the splashes and globs of yellow orange lava blobs sailing through the air. It’s 4:30 am their time. I am hopeful that the lava might make it out of the crater.
Big flow going into the NE valley: http://brunnur.vedur.is/myndir/webcam/2021/07/10/webcam_meradalahnukurSV.html#
The greatest show on earth has resumed. I woke up twenty minutes ago to lots of good clear splashing.
Could someone please remind me of how to post photos on here?