Volcanoes
Authorities name possible location for eruption in Iceland
The city of Grindavik. The weather service in Iceland believes an eruption of liquid rock from the magma tunnel in the southwest of the country, which has been active for weeks, is likely in the coming days. photo
© Bjorn Steinbekk/AP/dpa
A magma tunnel in southwest Iceland has been worrying people for weeks. Civil defense does not know exactly where the liquid rock could come to light. Volcanologists explain the reason.
The Icelandic authorities have identified a possible location for the molten rock to erupt from the magma tunnel that has been active for weeks called the southwest of the country. The deformation of the ground points to an area about two kilometers north of the evacuated town of Grindavík, civil defense director Vídir Reynisson said on Monday. The Svartsgeni geothermal power plant is around 1.5 kilometers away.
Reynisson said the plant provides heating for 30,000 people. The protection of the system has the highest priority. The construction of walls to stop escaping magma is happening faster than expected.
An approximately 15 kilometer long magma tunnel runs beneath the Reykjanes peninsula down to the seabed off the coast. On Monday, the weather service registered around 460 earthquakes by midday. The strongest had a magnitude of 2.7.
Outbreak very likely
According to Reynisson, magma is still flowing into the tunnel and is estimated to be 1,000 meters below the earth’s surface. “There is a high risk of an outbreak in the next few days, but we cannot quantify it precisely,” he said. If an eruption does not occur, the probability of an eruption decreases fairly quickly over time.
Volcanologist Olafur Gudmundsson from Uppsala University told Swedish news agency TT over the weekend that the tunnel was formed because the magma encountered resistance on its way to the Earth’s surface and then spread horizontally. It could break out somewhere or solidify.
According to seismologist Björn Lund, a volcanic eruption in this part of the Reykjanes Peninsula would be the first in about 800 years. In the area around Grindavík there are fissure volcanoes that form when a crack opens in the ground through which lava shoots upwards in a fountain – sometimes hundreds of meters. However, this is probably not an explosive eruption like the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 because the lava at Grindavík is composed differently. “If you stay a few hundred meters or a kilometer away, there is no great danger,” said the Uppsala University scientist TT. However, a lot of sulfur dioxide, which is harmful to health, is produced.