The Plume of Ballareldar?

/ 28/04/2021

Stunning photograph of the eruption. Photograph by Haussman Visuals.

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 to know the hidden innards of a volcano, and understanding their functions, is making the experience even better. 

So, let us take a journey through the volcanic features of the Ballareldar from the bottom up. During this journey I will try to impart the wonders I see, and why this cute little tourist eruption is one of the most scientifically important eruptions ever witnessed. 

To do this we must employ many tools of the trade, petrochemistry, geophysics, chemistry and garden average physics, to be able to look below the ground we walk on. As I go on, I will try to tell you what we know, what we can assume, and what are open questions to science. 

 

In the beginning there was the mantle 

The Geology department at the University of Iceland did wonders in the opening stages of the eruption taking samples and analysing them at breakneck speed. I wish we had later data at hand, but I think that is saved for some juicy future articles by the scientists in question. Which is fair enough, and they have let a few tidbits out that is highly intriguing. 

What we do have is still enough to make me feel like a kid visiting his first candy store. Because things are sufficiently “out there” to make my eyebrows lift quite substantially. 

Regular lava in Reykjanes is indicative of Mid Oceanic Rift Basalt (MORB) origin, coming up from the Mohorovic discontinuity between the crust and the mantle, it is normally partially evolved (fractionated), and has ample amounts of inclusions indicating that it has resided in the crust for a while. 

Normally you will see a medium amount of sulphur in the lava, and it will be fairly cool compared to the plume derived lava coming out nearer to the Icelandic mantle plume, and the plume derived lava is among the most sulphur rich lavas on the planet. 

Image by the Geology Department of the University of Iceland.

If we look at the current magma being ejected as lava, we find that it is, first of all, unusually hot. The confirmed temperature is 1190 ºC from the first observations, but I have seen later unconfirmed figures up towards the 1220 ºC. 

Higher temperatures than 1190 ºC is by far not impossible, remember that the official temperature was taken early on when the magma had been cooled and partially quenched as it passed between the cold sides of the 7km long and 15 km high dyke leading from the deep feeder conduit near Keilir, all the way to the surface. 

As the surrounding rock is heated by the passing hot magma, over time the cooling effect will diminish and the temperature of the lava will go up a bit. 

As far as I know the previous temperature record holder in Iceland was the Holuhraun III eruption at 1180 ºC. Here we had an origin that definitely was from a well-formed mantle plume, yes it had partially resided inside inside of Bárdarbunga and had travelled for a long stretch across a very long dyke. 

But a big part of it was fresh material from inside the mantle that was newly arrived. On top of that the flow rate in the dyke was large enough to heat it very well indeed, decreasing the cooling effect considerably. 

The telltale low TiO2 and high MgO. Image by the Geology Department of the University of Iceland.

The temperature of the lavas erupted during the Ballareldar is high enough to be seemingly congruent with plume origin.  

If we look at the regular lavas erupted at Reykjanes through the eyes of groundmass glass, we see that it usually contains about 250ppm of Sulphur, but the current lava is erupting an average of 1140ppm of sulphur. 

And we do know that the Icelandic plume produces record breaking amounts of sulphur as the associated volcanoes erupts. 

Here it is easy to think that what we are seeing is a tendril of magma that has squeezed itself merrily along the underside of Iceland until it arrived below Reykjanes during the last 800 years. Looking at the evidence so far, it is not a bad idea. 

But we need additional data to prove or disprove our little plume origin hypothesis. This is the point where petrochemistry shines. 

Rare Earth Minerals chart. Even the lantanides are unusually absent. The Geology Department of the University of Iceland.

The first we see is that the lava is rich with olivine, a crystal that is called Peridot and Chrysolite when used as a gemstone. It forms in the upper mantle, so now we know that at least the magma is from the upper mantle. 

Olivine comes in three distinct flavours, the magnesium flavour called foersterite (peridot) that can be green or transparent. It can only form above 400km depth, below that you get wadsleyite. 

The other common one is the reddish-brown fayalite (chrysolite) that contains iron, this forms at lower pressures than forsterite, so as such it is not pointing towards deep mantle origin. 

I will just briefly mention the third flavour, the whacky Manganese olivine named tephroite. From a volcanologic standpoint, it is the least understood of the 3. It can also have any colour visible to man, since it has a propensity to make love to pretty much any other metal. It is the penultimate slut in geology, making it into a darn good precursor when looking for mineralisations to mine. 

The Ballareldar lavas are rich in magnesium olivine (forsterite), this means that the origin of the magma is somewhere between 15-400 kilometres down. We also know that many Icelandic lavas are forsteritic, so it seems like we have once more proved a plume provenance. 

Now we need to compare the Ballareldar eruption (2021-) and the Holuhraun III eruption (2014-2015. The first thing that we see is that Holuhraun III has less olivine (forsterite) than Ballareldar has. 

If we look at the weight percentage of TiO2 at Holuhraun III we find that it is at 1.75 to 1.9%, whereas at Ballareldar we see a figure of 0.9%. On the other hand, we see weight percentages of MgO at around 6.7% at Holuhraun III versus 8.8-9% in the Ballareldar samples. 

Did we just find a spanner crashing into the spokes of the wheel of our hypothesis? Can we save our our pet theory? 

Yes, sadly our pet theory dies here in the warm embrace of TiO2, this is due to us knowing that the distance from the Icelandic plume center does not indicate decreasing TiO2, or vice versa. Plume derived forsteritic basalt does not drop in TiO2 with half. Bummer! 

At best we have a partial influence of the Icelandic plume, but sufficiently small to not explain the sulphur and the temperature as such. 

Here one could come up with the crutch-theory that it is another unknown plume at work. That is amply gunned down by geophysics, since we know from tomography mapping of the mantle, using measured differences in the travel speed of sound indicating temperature variations in the mantle. In simpler terms, we have a fairly good map of where there are plumes, or not, in the mantle. 

There is obviously no special plume under Reykjanes. At this point we will have to wait for new data from young strapping Ph.D. students. 

 

New data 

The gassy belly of the beast. Image by the Geology Department of the University of Iceland.

This is written a couple of days later as an addendum. I had already edited in the article when I found new data from the geology department at the University of Iceland. Problem is that the new data made mince-meat of what I had written above. 

My first instinct was to do a complete rewrite of the article, so that it would no look like I used the southern end of northbound donkey as a brain. Instead, I am leaving out the first part as it is, as an example of how new data is driving scientific discovery and creates the need for new models and hypothesis-formation. 

I love the smell of fresh science in the morning, well that and coffee. So, without further ado we will boldly go where no person has gone before. 

Let us begin with what is the same. The sulphur content is same at the high levels, and the release of SO2 is keeping steady at 2000 to 3000 tons per day. The variations closely follow eruption flow rates, so we can safely say that it will not increase nor decrease over time in any significant manner. 

Several people have asked me lately about the noticeable increase in “smoke and gas” from the vents. And yes, there has been an increase in the visible gas volumes at the volcano. Problem is that there is no increase in release of CO2 or SO2 from the volcano, and this is to be expected since the lava flow rates are constant while the Sulphur content has been consistently high. 

So, why then are we seeing more gas? There are two reasons for this. The first is that it is likely that water vapour has increased due to the magma moving through a number of aquifers, and that a few of those contain super-critical fluids. 

I have however not seen any data on water content, so this is speculative. The second reason is simple: from an actively erupting vent you have sufficient thermal uplift to chuck the gas straight up and out of the way as a visual hindrance. 

That is why we see more visible gas from dying colder vents; they do not have the energy for effective thermal convection. 

In short, the gas increase is mainly more a question of altitude than attitude. 

Petrochemical differences over time. Image by the Geology Department of the University of Iceland.

Now, let us talk about the differences. MgO has increased from the previously high number of 8.8-9 percent, now it is 9.7-10 percent. This means that there is more forsterite in the mixture. This in turn points towards greater depth. 

Now, let us turn to the TiO2, it has increased from the low number of 0.9% to 1.5%. These two increases in TiO2 and MgO indicates a deeper origin. 

This indicates that the original magma most likely was of Icelandic Plume origin and that the plume head is slightly wider than previously believed. It also points towards some process depleting the magma during its long and slow movement towards Reykjanes from the plume core under Kistufell. 

One solution that is likely, is that TiO2 due to it’s higher melting point trends towards attaching itself to the bottom of the crust in a process called underplating, whereas the MgO does not. 

Now, here we arrive at a monster of a question. Was the eruption caused by arriving deeper material that first pushed up the depleted magma under the eruption site? Or, has the eruption depleted the supply of depleted magma and new deeper material is going up to fill the gap? 

If it is the latter, we are most likely seeing a smaller version of the process that created the Icelandic plume to begin with, eruptions causing a void creating lowered pressure increasing the melt process at depth.  

At the Icelandic plume this process has been running for 14.4 million years now, so it has burrowed itself deep and become a true monster among plumes. Whereas Ballareldar is too small in the greater scheme of things, and it will putter out when the eruption dies out. 

I should here point out that we do not know which one of the two options given above is true, I lean towards thel atter idea of burrowing. But, as per usual, until a strapping young Ph.D. Student has done the heavy lifting and done a garnet study we will not know for sure. 

 

Final words 

What I would like to see is a study of garnets in lava. Various garnets form at different depth in the mantle, so have a garnet study would be helpful to constrain further the depth of the formative melt. Want to get a doctorate in petrochemical volcanology..? Go garnets, go! 

I had initially planned to write about the dyke, and the future for the Ballareldar. I had also planned to write about the name Ballareldar. That will though have to wait for part two of the article since I got rolling with the petrochemical part of life. 

So, in part two we will leave the mantle behind and become crusty indeed. 

CARL REHNBERG 

Sources: 

characterization_of_the_1st_and_2nd_day_of_volcanic_products_from_geldingadalahraun_2021.pdf (hi.is) 

Microsoft Word – trace_isotope_report_v1r2.docx (hi.is) 

MS Template (skemman.is) 

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640 thoughts on “The Plume of Ballareldar?”

  1. Oh, just called in to see what’s happening and the eruption has stopped? Everything’s hot, but quiescent.
    Are we waiting for a ‘big bang’? Or is this it – over?

    • Oh – off we go again… How strange! RUV showed a fountaining vent, MBL showed a quiescent one. Threw me off my tracks.

      • Cam lost some moments of the back.

        After minuts of blockage the fountain came back crazy, clearing the pressure.

        Seems back to normal.

  2. The cone just went from fountaining hundreds of meters into the air to eerie silence in about 60 seconds… spooky

  3. The eruption is become a bit episodic. Quiet moments can stretch over a minute or longer with no outward signs of eruption (except the glow of course), and then a huge fountain event.

    Geldingadalir cam on RUV.is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-RhgB1INII
    Quiet period, for example: May 2, 00:02
    Huge fountain afterwards: May 2, 00:03

    We’ll see what this new development means in the longer run…

    • Wow!! That was spectacular… both the quiet and the bigger than ever eruptions!

    • Actually 23.47.30 ish. And again at 23.50. And 00.03.

      The fountaining quietens down, becoming invisible, the liquid lava drains down the insides, then… BOOM!

      Small inner wall collapse at 00.05, with an accompanying small overflow of lava on top of the left flank. Those pinnacles are taking a pasting!

      Quite an eventful few minutes!

      Spectacular fountaining at Geldingadalir

      //s.imgur.com/min/embed.js

      • At 07:31:20 starting the highest fountain so far, well out of the screen….

        What is going on here???

    • that is a geyser of yellow hot lava.. I believe we have geyser action here

  6. My personal take is we’re beginning to see the end of this eruption. Pressure is dropping and becoming spasmodic. Sooner or later the vent will cease erupting magma and start cooling down.

    • As way of explanation, two things:
      1). A couple of days back the Grindjavik Drumplot and those nearby showed low level signals that I interpreted as the dyke walls tectonically closing due to magma pressure falling. This signal has faded, and I guess closure is now completing. May take a few days.
      2). The effect on our remaining active vent is that the lower pressure and narrower dyke is causing the flow to choke, to build pressure, and resume for a while. Hence the cycle of brief periods of quiescence and longer periods of resumed fountaining.
      Sooner or later the pressure won’t make it through the closing dyke walls and the eruption ends.

      That said, the fact the Reykjanes Peninsula cycle has started once more suggests we might see further activity in the next 30-50 years. I’ll leave that to my descendants!

      All offered from the point of view of a dumb peasant. Please feel free to argue against my hypothesis! And of course, time will tell… 🙂

      • All that said, when the vent fires up after a quiescent moment, the fountains are amazing!

        • In fact, watching the sequences, I’d say the pressure of the magma remains much the same.
          The integrity of the dyke and feeder tube walls may be the issue. The peninsula may be collapsing the space the dyke built.

      • I reckon it’s possibly linked to the slow flank collapse yesterday, maybe the seat of the collapse is deeper than just the vent cone; it may have affected the conduit itself.

        But I’m just an extremely lapsed geomorphologist, so what do I know!? 😀

  7. Happened again at 01:18..Acting up like Geysir. Strange behaviour. 🤔

    • And again about 02:08 followed by abrupt transition to a very high fountain.

      • I’ve lost count how many times past 01:18 this has happened. So weird. It’s just like watching a geyser when it does that.

    • Not strange. Drink a bottle of Miralax and see how “regular” you become.

    • That was no surprise as the flow from the vents now go directly into Meradalír along the shortest path arount the hill that all the instruments are on.

  9. Ok. Pulsing theory 1.0
    Thermal and mechanical downward erosion of the conduit is increasing the volume of the lava lake. The volume in the lake is sufficient to temporarily “plug” the upward flow until degassing in the conduit below exceeds the lake pressure resulting in the really spectacular fountains. I have been watching this while tasting scotch and with the post it’s stuck on the iPad it looks like a couple of those have been higher than 500m. Awesome to watch

    • Perhaps (if you are correct), the pressure buildup will soon force another vent to open or reawaken…

    • I think what is happening is the magma is being redirected at depth, but the pulses if magma rising from below are too large for any new tube to handle completely, so whatever magma doesn’t make it into the new tube is erupting as the big sporadic fountains we see on the webcams.

    • I wanted a surprise and I got it! Quite a development. I’m not sure of any hawaiian style eruption engaging in this exact behaviour before.

      I did see Etna once do something similar once but it was very brief and may not have been exactly the same.

      Kilauea Iki in 1959 did have cyclic high fountains, and although the pattern in time was very different, it might be related to what is happening here. Kilauea Iki had a cold stagnant lava lake blocking the conduit and there was no activity, at some point the buoyancy of the gas overcame the weight of the lava and shot spectacularly. This seems related to your idea of the lava lake plug and might indeed be at play here.

      Another possibility is that it has to do with gas slugs, the magmatic gasses could be merging into ascending waves inside the conduit. This could have to do with the magma being mantle in origin, with presumably a very high CO2 content.

  10. As Carl already said, the magma seems to travel through aquifers now, so you get more bubble nucleation. Think of a steam engine: the pressure builds up, a valve opens and the power is released. Then steam builds up again, and the cycle repeats.

  11. Pulsing?!

    GL Edit: Yes. → At least that is how it was presented to me in the Dragon chat system/channel/gizmo.

  12. The bubble nucleation idea is likely pretty spot on. Sparks noted a nucleation mechanism for some South American volcanoes as most likely being responsible for their periodic frothy eruption patterns, interspersed with a period of seeming silence. He likened the sequence as being representative of a sigmoid curve in nucleation rates. A sigmoid, for those that don’t know, shows up in very many natural processes as a system swings from one state to another. As the triggering phenomena approaches a critical inflection point, the entire system swings into the other state. As that phenomena subsides, the system drifts back to it’s other relatively stable previous state.

    Toss a Methos™ in a soda and you see the cascade up close and personal until the reaction rate drops back below the threshold.

    • Note: This observation by Sparks was in a forward to a collection of articles on explosive volcanism. I think it was the same set of articles that introduced the idea of “wagging” causing seismic signals. All I can say for certain is that I need to keep better notes.

    • A really fun Year 7 lesson and homework activity is building your own volcano model, then letting them off with red pop and menthos in the playing fields on a summer’s day. We used to get so many rubberneckers watching out of the windows!

  13. The vent may have become clogged up from all the drones that have been flown into it.

    Jokes aside, it looks like the fountains are becoming less intense and also less frequent.

  15. I think the pressure release is even higher as the 6:44am fountain went to new record heights.
    I am guessing the we have an eroded funnel wide end up where the surface lava lake sits and pressure of lava plugs the fizzing until the pressure, like a geyser, cuts loose and we get the next burst 💥
    I think we are going to see a new fissure soon but I could be wrong
    This new height suggests we are not running low on gas release

    • The 6:52 burst was incredibly high too, shooting hot rock new distances into the lava field with brown dust kicked up all over
      I’d look for a new fissure soon.

  17. Sorry to keep commenting but the 07:07 am burst gives new meaning to the term lava geyser or volcano geyser. That explosive burst had to be seen to be believed yellow orange lava spraying everywhere

    • 7.21 also. Have you been keeping a record of the times so that a frequency can be calculated? It would be interesting to see how it might change and also the subsequent geyser heights.

      • 07:32:12 is spectacular but I dont have a way of estimating height or volume ejected
        That burst kicked up a large brown yellow dust cloud from hitting the ground

        • I was thinking only about relative height. Like you I’m wondering if a longer interval means more pressure and higher fountains.

      • 07:42:37 reaching height of background hill large volume and kicked up dust cloud

  18. The 07:20:47 burst 💥 burst is spectacular, it seems the longer the quiet interval, the higher the burst

    Some of the cones to the left off camera are smoking and pulsing a tiny bit, I wish we could see what is happening here

    • Look at the 7:31:30 burst, after 45s it goes out of the screen

  19. 7:42.10 starting the next one, after 2,5 Minutres of silence

  20. 07:54:39 new high almost reaching the Geldingadalir banner at the top of the camera

  21. That last one at 07:54 went as high as the bottom of the Geldingadalir Tag on the screen on Ruv cam

    • Yes new high and that takes increasing pressure. Wish I could see what is going on at the left as the smoke has increased and the pulsing of one of the clouds is noticeable now

      • The second MBL camera shows the entire crater row up to fissure 2 and beyond. There’s nothing that stands out visually at the moment, though. I think the smoke is just an indication that there is magma not far underground, and I’d expect it to be coming from the other vents which are cooling down.

  23. Loving this running commentary of the times. I can let my imagination run and don’t need to see the actual video footage…

    Just joking! I’ll be going through the time stamps religiously while the F1 is on. Multitasking ftw… 😉

    Also all the theories to account for the behaviour. Well done everyone, good to see the little grey cells at work.

  24. There is either a big pulse about to happen or it has STOPPED, arrgh NO!
    I vote for pulse LOL’s

  25. The 08:35 almost left the screen..

    2-4Hz tremor on faf graph seems to show this from midnight onwards.

    • 8.45am is the next one so slightly earlier than the rough guesstimate of ‘normal’ interval. Accordingly, the fountain height was indeed lower than the previous event.

    • I called it at the time, from the first one at 23.47. Just delayed my posting for a while, and several VCers noted it before I posted.

      Shot out to Javi, Sam, Clive, and Holger_Alberta! Well done guys!

  26. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I1I-0PUhFmU&fbclid=IwAR0t7A7W1RIyQzyPndLDcvavOYowMZ89tGn4HVIpYvgekH_vyZgU7rkjPDo

    This lava is really fluid the lava fountains look really ”Liquid” ”wet” ”sloshy” the viscosity at least near the vent must be very low. Picrite as well as Thoelitic melts can display extraodinary low viscosities if conditions are right. Its possible that the viscosity is quite alot lower than Holuhraun.

    I wonder what a similar vent cone at Nyiragongo woud look like .. perhaps not too diffirent at all .. But Nyiragongos crater pahoehoes are more fluid looking than at Smeagol and Gollum cones in the start of this eruption

  27. The lava is still flowing, but the gas explosions are much more intermittent. I would guess that the magma is becoming more evolved. This eruption has been very hard to predict. It may look like an ending, but it can still surprise. And the most likely time for a new vent is shortly after the old one blocks

    • This magma is not evolved at all
      Its flowing very quickly indeed in the channels when its erupting .. fluid hot primitive .. and I do think there will be a larger new vent soon … : )

      But its possible that the eruption will focus on this vent .. it seems well established. The lava is flowing at great speed in the channels with standing waves and lamminar currents

  29. Rough calculation based on very limited data gives an average event interval of 11 to 12 minutes. Shorter intervals seem to equate to lower ejecta heights and longer to higher, although more data needs to be collected for any confidence in that idea.
    Now, why is this happening?

    • I’m looking at around 10.00 am ish on the mbl.is FLO camera. There’s a huge gas plume after a smaller dust cloud just behind the collapsed flank area that I’ve been watching for the last day or so. It looks to be between the active Fissure 5s, and the original Twin Bob/Gollum=Smeagol cones.

      on further waching, I’m going to throw a cat amongst the pigeons and wonder if it’s the shadows of the gas plume on the hillside behind. Has anyone checked the sun direction?

      • Urgh. this has posted in completely the wrong place. Please friendly dragons, delete?

  30. The drumplot station faf is showing the periods of rest as mentioned above. Nice catch!
    Just a screenshot for the records. 😊
    Graph by IMO.

    • The quiet periods on the drumplots are about 2-3 minutes, compared with a fountaining cycle of 10-15 minutes. The cycles seem to coincide at first glance, pressure build up leading to the delay in fountaining?

      • There has been some discussion above.
        At first I thought of the pulsing seen at Baugur/Holuhraun too, just before the eruption waned. Equilibrium in pressure was reached.
        There was a magma chamber involved, not sure if that is comparable with this pulsing. The bursts after the pauses seems more explosiv now.

        I don’t recall such strong intermittent burst in Holuhraun. At the other hand the cone of Baugur was more bath tub like. The upwelling magma was slowed down by the lava in the “tub” much I think.

  31. http: //hraun.vedur.is/ja/drumplot/drumplot/faf_highpass_2.0.png
    Wordpress refuses to give the link, copy and remove space after :

  32. It seems the activity is or has entered a new phase .Myself an interested observer going by limited knowledge of the complexity of volcanology- but my feel is that the activity will settle on the current vent and behave like a shield volcano or it’s winding down in a slow sort of way.
    Because it’s a small eruption-going by its output of lava it seems that the eruption is the first outbreak of more to come in that part of Iceland. Stop if it ends soon 50/50 chance,it’s not the end but only the beginning (sounding like Churchill now). That’s my take-Ibleave the science to others ,who are good at it,as this blog has shown to date! I do wonder what the Icelandic volcanologist take on the future of the eruption?

  33. Only word from IMO is that this change in activity might be due to fewer and bigger gas bubbles than before.

    Eruption plume is at 2500 km this morning. Much higher than usually but might be due to weather conditions.

  34. Something else I’ve noticed this morning…Unless it’s simply to do with a change in the camera settings, the lava looks to be a brighter orange now – a sign of increased temperature or a change in chemical composition?

    • Rewind it to just before it stalled. Smoke on hillside to the right of the cam.

    • I would if I could, but they have both turned utterly black. Hopefully will be back soon.
      The close-up MBL cam appears to be offline as well, so it could be a communications issue. The weather is good for solar at the moment, so I don’t think it is power related.

      • It is back, and that is indeed a most interesting view….
        Too big and disconnected from the flow field to be a peat fire, so I think we’ve got something happening, and we could be short of another camera soon.

  36. Live from Iceland webcam has been zooming in on an emparés of steam/gas coming from the side of the hill next to one of the flows. New fissure? Can’t tell where it is though.

    • I had noticed a plume of smoke rising behind the hill on the wide angle mbl camera. Thought it might just be a build up of lava again, but apparently not.

    • It looks like it is roughly parallel to the existing fissures but along the western side of Geldingadalir, about a third of the way up the slope of Fagradalsfjall.

      New fissures that are not an extension of the existing ones would be an interesting development.

      I can see from the MBL wide field camera that there are people atop the ridge behind the fissure 1 vents, they’ll have a great view across the valley to what is happening, so there should be videos coming up on social media soon.

  37. Looks like a new vent is opening up in geldingadalir on the right
    side of the original 2 vents. Ruv cam has turned that way.
    If it proceeds we will be able to see its birth up close and personal!

    • I’m confused about the location. Is this north or south of the existing fissures?

      • It would be to the west of the existing fissures, more or less directly across the valley from the fissure 1 vents, and maybe slightly to the south as well.

    • @Bavd: The last eight comments refer to this observation. And sure, that’s a lot of steam. I’m just tuning in, is this the hill southwest of the original twins Ernie and Bert? … Exciting …

      • Yes, i think on the hill Southwest of the original bert an ernie. In the ruv.is view the lava field
        In the left bottom corner is covering the so called ancient cemetary.

      • I’m looking at around 10.00 am ish on the mbl.is FLO camera. There’s a huge gas plume after a smaller dust cloud just behind the collapsed flank area that I’ve been watching for the last day or so. It looks to be between the active Fissure 5s, and the original Twin Bob/Gollum=Smeagol cones.

        on further waching, I’m going to throw a cat amongst the pigeons and wonder if it’s the shadows of the gas plume on the hillside behind. Has anyone checked the sun direction?

  38. Via giggle translate, from jardvis
    “Heights of magma jets
    In recent days, we have seen stronger magma jets than have been in the eruption for the longest time. We are accustomed to estimating heights, but we can all do that if we have the right information. The attached photo (screenshot from Morgunblaðið’s webcam on the slope of Stórahrút) has been calibrated from the heights seen in the photo. Each jet that would be 80 m, 160 m and 240 m high would have been marked. Now we just hope that Morgunblaðið does not change the zoom!
    The latest indications (10 am on Sunday morning) are that it could be a new eruption opening to the south in Geldingadalur. We will see how it develops. If it does take over, there is a risk that the calibration in the image will be processed for a crater!”

  39. Yes, huge steaming there, and main vent is in cycling mode at last. Its often pause for a while.

  40. According to MBL the behaviour changed into pulsating jet lava fountains.

  41. Yeap behind the large hill left to the busy vent- smoke is rising, can see people on the hill creast top.

    • Impressive. Is that Reykjavik in front? In case you did not see it I posted some additional remarks on VC Bar like suggested.

  43. From RUV via giggle translate:

    https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/05/02/mogulega-ad-opnast-ny-sprunga-i-geldingadolum

    “I don’t think it’s just a new crack opening. We know very little, we only saw this first on webcams with civil protection, “says Salóme Jórunn Bernharðsdóttir, who is on duty at the Meteorological Office. Professor Þorvaldur Þórðarson says it is more likely that this is a burn. The RÚV webcam has now been turned to the area, a lot of smoke is rising from the slope west of Geldingadalur.

      • TBH, It does look like a burn. Also, it seems to be downwind fom the fountain.

      • To me it looks more like grass fire smoke than SO2 and water rich volcanic gases. But I’m sitting in my lounge room drinking pale ale on the other side of the world, so take that with a grain of salt.

        • And we are not expecting rain anytime soon so this could go on for days, even weeks.

  44. Up and about and looking at smoking (the hill, not cigarettes – bad habit). I thought it was a grass fire, but I’ve seen plenty of them in my time and they move (sometimes swiftly) as the fuel burns.
    But I’m hoping we are seeing a new vent. That would be cool (hot-cool!).

    • Smoking a lot at the bottom of the slope…we may have a conclusion soon.

      • Oh, with the new camera view it does look like a grass fire. Oh well.

    • The fires I’m familiar with here (Queensland) would rip up that hillside fast, but that’s with very different vegetation to what appears to be there. Looks like a slow smouldering fire .. wonder what ignited it?

      • That’s the burning question (sorry) what ignited it? It’s too far from the vent for a lava bomb. The ground is pretty soggy there because there has been a lot of rain. I suppose a tourist with a small BBQ kit might have started it.
        This is worth watching.

        • Everybody loves tourists.;-)
          Two years ago I drove up north from the Côte d’Azur crossing the Provence on countryroads going to Val ‘Isère. That was in July or August. A car driver approaching on the other side of the road threw his cigarette bud, still burning, out of the window. I read the French papers for a while. No fire. That was only lucky. Everything was bone-dry. It’s few people who can start enormous damage. Single people. Same with garbage in the Alps. A few hikers.

          • I expect a natural and probably volcanic cause for the fire. Fissure extension giving off gas hot enough to light things up but not actually erupting, perhaps? Idle speculation of course.

    • I can’t imagine there is much combustible material on that hillside. Some moss and grass and hardly any topsoil.

  45. The smoke rising in question seems to have same colour as the active vent emitting.Peat I thought gives off white/grey smoke.,could be wrong.

    • No it does look like peat/grass smoke, perhaps vegetarian next to older flows been dried out via radiating heat from the lava before it became solid and cooler just a guess.

  46. Someone is walking up to it now, and there have been helicopters in the area, so we’ll have an official word soon enough.

    • Incredible zoom at the moment, and yes, can see the flames in the grass, so it is a vegetation fire.

      • I think that zoom answered it.. definitly a slow vegetation fire. RUV Langihryggur has now switched back to the main event.

        • We have hazard reduction burns happening in my area at the moment, and watching that smoke while smelling the bushfire in the air was an almost surreal experience.

          I suppose that’s what smellevision would be like…

          • I was in Canberra in December 2019 during the big bushfires, and a couple of times the smoke from the fire east of Canberra near Braidwood was so thick you couldn’t see the length of a city block and the sun was reduced to a barely visible dull red ember.

            The drive back north was memorable too … 43 degrees C at Hexham, NSW, and always that smell of smoke in the air.

      • Sounds like they are still unsure about the vegetation fire. Still waiting for the final word from the IMO. Sounds the people at the scene have given conflicting info.

  47. If you at the Storihrutur mountain top facing the camera and line up with the car parked on the col, you can pretty much work out where on the hillside the fire is.

    Pretty much in line with vents one and two so this is more likely to be a new southerly vent rather than a grass fire.

    That’s my take.

        • If the fire has been started by hot gases escaping from cracks in the ground, look for areas where the convection is driving the steam upwards quite sharply compared to the surrounding areas. This is where the ground heat is highest and indicates where gas jets, or potentially, lava is likely to come up.

          There are 3 parallel lines of steaming at the back of the smoking field at the moment.

        • The odd thing to me is, it doesn’t look to be in the fissure line, it’s offset a few 100 meters to the west. Also, it doesn’t look parallel, but offset about 20-30 degrees clockwise. If it is a new vent/fissure, wouldn’t that be noisy?

          • The rotation angle could be an apparent one due to this being on the slope of Fagradalsfjall. My first thought also was that this was further west, but it’s hard to tell so I would not be surprised if it was on or close to the extended fissure line.

          • To me, if it’s in the fissure line, it should have been in the southern tongue of the Geldingadalir lava field, or even slightly on the hill just east of it, which it isn’t.

          • To me, the cracks look like they are roughly straight west from the red dot, on the hill immediately inside the danger area, more or less where hiking path B ends.

      • Observers in the area say there seems to be an underlying source of heat driving this.

  48. I’ve been watching and two things strike me: the ‘grass fires’ are in three lines, which would suggest three in-line cracks from pressure below. And the grass there is low, wet, clumpy. The fire should be moving up and out the hillside, whereas it remains in three lines.
    Hmmmm….new vent? 🙂

    • Oh, and of course the change in the current vent suggests something may be up.

      • In fact…I think a new line has opened and started smoking, closer to the camera?

        • It is vegetation fire, but I expect the ignition source is volcanic. It is close enough to an extension of the fissure to suggest something is brewing.

          Settling in to watch with enjoyment… but wish I could see what’s going underground.

          • Yes, I have looked at several camera angles, the webcam people have been zooming in and looking, I agree.
            The vegetation fire as an underlying heat sauce possibly.
            Perhaps the main fissure has developed some settling slump from the effects of stream erosion. Could this lead to hot outgassing causing the fires I wonder?

    • good point, vegetation burns don’t follow these lines. Neither does it progress visually. It would be nice yo hear Mike Ross’s insight on this…

  49. Latest guestimate from a flyover video and camera angles:

    Red dot: the smoking area
    Grey line: cracks in the fagradalsfjall massif from weeks ago
    Blue line: rough line of the reyk fault

  50. Watching the Geldingadalir RUV camera. The wind is swirling, it’s impossible to see. We’ve just got to wait for the boots on the ground.Taking lots of screen snips.

    And trying to sort out concussion protocol for Dear Son who bashed his nut 2 weeks ago. And getting my coffee. About 2 hours too late… And I should be planting in the garden…

    Happy May Day Sunday everyone!

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