Informations on earthquakes and tremors in the Vatnajökull area

Just a quick addition to yesterday: You can find information on the latest earthquakes here, and for the latest view of the tremors click here - from there, click on the little red and yellow square sitting on Vatnajökull. And, while we´re at it - here the webcam at Jökulsárlón, which used to be all nice and white and blue, now covered in ash!!

For my 1- year anniversary of stay in Iceland, and the End of the World: A new volcanic eruption!

After 7 years of rest, Grimsvötn Volcano, under the Vatnajökull icecap in South East Iceland, has started an eruption just minutes before the predicted Rapture. So far there have been no reports of numerous believers being swept up into the sky in Iceland, but the ash certainly has gone a long way up - the plume is currently 20km high, and the question remains how "serious" the eruption will be. Parts of the main highway around the island have been closed just south of Vatnajökull, as experts expect that 10 to 12 hours after the onset of the eruption, a so-called Jökulhlaup will take place - a glacial flood triggered by the melting of the glacier by the erupting lava. It appears that the ash produced by the Grimsvötn is coarser than what was produced by Eyjafjallajökull last year (see last year´s posts on this blog). The size of the ash particles is crucial in influencing its behaviour, and in particular, its potential of being transported over long distances and extended areas: In general, the finer the ash, the further it can travel before it falls onto the ground, thus no major air-traffic chaos is predicted yet.
Here a few first pictures from the eruption (including the picture I used at the beginning of this post), probably by tomorrow the news will be flooded with more images. Also, it looks like Míla, who was hosting the webcams for Eyjafjallajökull last year, are currently setting up two new webcams (here and here), although right now (23:17 icelandic time) they don´t appear to work yet.
But that´s is for now - time to go pack the tent, a few sampling bottles, and most of all the camera, for the trip out East to go check it all out tomorrow :)

Should we get rid of erupting volcanoes?

Eyjafjallajökull, after having been erupting for a little over 5 and a half weeks, appears to be a little more quiet - in the past week, no more lava has been coming out of the crater, and the plume is a pure steam plume, a mere 2km high - no more air-traffic disrupting ash; I took the above photo on May 24th. Now of course everyone (mostly the farmers located in the area of ash fall, and of course airlines) is hoping for the eruption to be over. But unfortunately, it is impossible to tell whether this is just a little rest phase to start again with renewed vigour, or whether it is truly over... so we will just have to wait and see.


But since the eruption has been causing all the air traffic chaos, people have been toying with ideas on how to try and get rid of erupting volcanoes, and all the problems associated with them. Some of the ideas, if not practical, certainly get points for creativity - BBC summarized some of those crazy ideas, either from scientists or from the public. The ideas range from putting a lid/plug on top of it, to towing the volcano away (!??), or putting a giant "carbon nano-tube" that would send the ash straight to outer space.


To me it is interesting to see how people believe one could do something about an erupting volcano - we were all brought up believing that if there is no solution, then there is no problem - or if we can't fix the problem then we clearly aren't trying hard enough. Volcanic eruptions such as Eyjafjallajokull are an interesting case of a natural disaster with a timeframe that is somewhat vexing to humankind.


One endmember of natural disasters are earthquakes, that are something we know we can't do anything about (at least at this point in time), they occur with no warning and the damage is done within seconds. Of course there can be numerous aftershocks, going on for weeks - as it was the case for the Chile earthquake earlier this year - but the basic scenario still can be summarized as " no warning -> seconds or minutes of shaking and instantaneous destruction -> mankind has to deal immediately with the physical and moral consequences of it".


The other endmember of that timescale could for instance be something like the consequences of global warning. Here the scenario would be "decades of warning -> decades of slow destruction -> mankind may have some time to adapt to the evolving situation, even though it comes at a great cost".


In the case of earthquakes, we have learned to just deal with them, and to accept the fact that nothing can be done about their occurence - and given that on average there is one magnitude 8 earthquake per year, we are regularly reminded of the fact that these things just happen. In the case of global warning, most people can just go on living their lives as always, mostly in denial about it when it comes to everyday activities. Yet in the case of ongoing volcanic eruptions, there is a certain inexorability to the event that somehow we seem not to be able to deal with very well. They are marginally more predictable than earthquakes, although the error on the time estimates are still very large. And once they are going, they could be going till tomorrow, or for the next 10 years - which makes it difficult to get ready for them, in particular if you are a farmer in the path of the main ash fallout, or the CEO of an airline company.

But for now, Eyjafjallajokull is quiet, its neighbour Katla shows no more, no less signs of unrest than it did before the Eyja eruption, and the farmers are doing their very best to get rid of the ash on their fields to still be able to plant some grass for their winter hay stocks. The ones who are upset about it are of course all the tourists who were hoping to see the volcano erupt in their summer vacation, and the Eruption Tour companies in Iceland that spawned immediately after the beginning of the eruption. Who knows? It is probably just taking a little break, and will make itself (himself? herself? What's the gender of a volcano?) heard again.

Meanwhile, new ash-induced mayhem has taken place in Central and South America, where yesterday's eruptions of Pacaya Volcano (Guatemala) and Tungurahua Volcano (Ecuador) caused the evacuation of thousands of people living on the slopes of the volcanoes, and killing one unfortunate reporter that got too close to Pacaya. Here's a good reminder of what volcanoes really are: Tungurahua has woken up from its dormant stage in 1999, and Pacaya has already been at it since 1965; every couple of years powerful eruptions cause all sorts of problems to the local population, but of course we rarely hear about it in Europe. It does put Eyjafjallajokull's eruption into a bit of perspective...

First visit to Eyjafjallajökull

Luckily, my move to Iceland was scheduled to happen in the few days where the various airports crucial to my journey (Geneva - Frankfurt - Reykjavik) were outside the influcence area of the now famous plume from Eyjafjallajökull Volcano, and I landed within 5 minutes of the scheduled time. Four days later, I was on my way to one of the observation spots of the volcano, in the valley north of the edifice, relatively close to Þórólfsfelli where one of the webcams is located.

Already from the hills of the Western Rift Zone, just a few kilometers outside of Reykjavik, we could see the plume billowing high into the blue sky - to about 7 km, according to the information statement of the Nordic Volcanological Center. As we got closer, daylight started to get dimmer, allowing us to start seeing the glow of lava fountains at the source of the plume.

I have been fortunate to see quite a few volcanoes during the last 15 years or so - in various stages of activity and of explosivity. But this one most certainly wins the competition of the most powerful one. Actually seeing the plume developing above the crater , and the glowing volcanic bombs flying up what looked like at least one kilometer into the air, really helped to get a feel for the incredible amounts of ash discharged every minute of every hour of every day, and a better grasp of the reason why the european airspace has been encoutering so many issues. Below you can see a satellite picture of the plume, taken roughly at the same time as I was standing there watching and taking my own pictures (Picture by Ingibjörg Jónsdóttir from the University of Iceland - check out the amazing collection of
satellite pictures of the eruption on her webpage) - and at the same time, many airports in Ireland, Spain and subsequently the UK were closed. Preliminary estimates of the magma discharge (= volume of lava actually ejected out of the volcano) were about 300 m³ per second (reported by the British Geological Survey quoting scientists of the Earth Science Insitute at the University of Iceland). That's the volume of a nice size 2-storey house every second. Or the volume of the Empire State Building every hour. Of course, not all of it is carried into the plume, and it appears that a little less than half of the material is being deposited on the crater immediately. Some of the ash falls from the plume along the way, causing a lot of damage for the population and the cattle - a couple of days ago the schools were closed below the trajectory of the plume in Iceland.

How will it evolve? No one really knows. At this point, people from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the University of Iceland, as well as many other people in Iceland and scientists all over the world are working like bees to try and collect as much data as possible - seismic tremors and earthquakes which can tell how the magma moves beneath the surface to the deep roots of the volcano, ground deformation (using GPS) which occurs as material is being displaced below the ground (during the course of the eruption, the ground has moved by over 6 cm in certain locations..!) , ash chemistry which is an indication of the composition of the magma erupted, chemical characteristics of rivers around the volcano, as well as satellite pictures of the plume - all of these data are put together and there is an eruption meeting every 2-3 days at the Institute of Earth Sciences to ensure people from all disciplines are talking to each other, hoping every time something changes to learn a little something about the plumbing of the volcano, the eruptive processes and the consequences thereof on people's lives.

Let's laugh about it.

Maybe it's because it's one of the first big-impact volcanic eruption since the coming of the Facebook/Twitter/Name-your-favourite-blog-provider Age. But it just seems crazy how much publicity Eyjafjallajökull (EFJ) got. Granted, it did cause an unprecedented level of transportation chaos in Europe, and as a consequence, in the rest of the world. But it has also generated a wealth of articles, posts and updates - in a surprisingly short amount of time.

First of all - the name. I have already talked about this in my previous posts - with various videos featuring british journalists trying to say the "E word", or tips on how to remember the name "Ayva - Fiat - Yoghurt - Merkel(said very fast)". Here my current favourite explanation of how EFJ got its name: It was the cat's fault!!

Then the jokes. Although as found on one site "It's a bit early for Iceland volcano jokes. We should wait for the dust to settle"... if you try to search "Eyjafjallajokull jokes" it finds 107'000 search results...! Here in no particular order, a few of my favourite ones (sorry - I can't find any good credits for the quotes....! But they were all found on random websites, i.e. I for sure cannot claim any credit for them..!)...

About "we wanted cash, you gave us ash" - official excuse of Iceland: The letter "C" doesn't exist in the icelandic alphabet, so ash is all you'll get.

Or: Iceland goes bankrupt, and then manages to set their island on fire. This has insurance scam written all over it.

There is no pleasing the English. Last time they got the Ashes they were all over it.

And then, of course, CNN always has to have one funny one - in a "ha-ha let's laugh about how stupid this person is", sad kind of way - Iceland can't have volcanoes because it's too cold? Really? I guess, in a world where Switzerland is east of Germany, for sure volcanic activity could be linked to the average air temperature.

The one that really surprised me (but I should know better by now!?) - is that you can already order t-shirts or underwear featuring Eyjafjallajökull. Fancy owning undies saying "Volcano, Baby!" on them?

Icelandic 101

Eyjafjallajökull is still erupting. And people (including myself) are still struggling to pronounce the name properly - here a pretty entertaining little video on the attempts by british journalists (thanks Paul :) ). But you'll admit it - it is not an easy one to pronounce (swiss german meets aztecan?). Since I have been trying to learn a little Icelandic, and many people have asked me about the origin of that language, I am going to leave the eruption aside for the day and go on a little linguistic tangent - mostly borrowed from Wikipedia (but before I do that - here a new compilation of amazing pictures of the volcano, and of life in the vicinity of the volcano).

Icelandic is a north germanic language related to Old Norse, which is essentially the language spoken by Vikings between the 8th and the 14th century. The alphabet consists of 32 letters - two of which are derived from Old English and only found in Icelandic, Faroese and some local scandinavian dialects. They are eth (ð) and thorn (þ), and the latter is actually a runic letter - and their pronounciation is generally similar to that of "th" in english. Generally speaking, most european languages have evolved towards a simpler grammar with respect to Latin and ancient Greek, but Icelandic has retained grammatical rules pretty similar in complexity to that of Latin - and in fact, it has evolved so little since the Vikings that people fluent in Icelandic can read the original versions of the Old Norse Viking sagas without too much trouble (the above picture is an excerpt of Njáls Saga).

But I did spend many years in school studying Latin and ancient Greek, so never mind the grammar - I haven't gone that far into my icelandic studies yet anyways. The first nightmare arises from the icelandic pronounciation rules - despite the fact that I am already familiar with languages that have a rather strange sound to them (swiss german - say Chuchichäschtli!) or no apparent correlation between written letters and the sounds you are supposed to generate (english - think "though/through/enough/plough"). So for instance, in Icelandic the letters "hv" sometimes sound like "qu", having a "l" or an "n" after the letter "f" turns the latter into a "p" but "nd" after "f" turns our f into an "m". But my favourite rule has to do with our beloved icelandic volcano, and I am taking this from my "Colloquial Icelandic: The Complete Course for Beginners" book: "ll" is pronounced "tl" , except in loan words and pet names. Pet names? Now that sounds promising - a language that has rules for pet names. What we can learn from this is that Eyjafjallajökull being no pet, we should really pronounce it "Eyjafjatlajökutl" - not without reminding me of Popocatéptl or Ixtaccíhuatl, aztecan names for two volcanoes near Mexico City...!

Eruption - continued.

Day 5 of the explosive activity at Eyjafjallajökull Volcano, and many european airports remain closed. The eruption is still sending ashes 8km into the atmosphere, and doesn't show any signs of weakening - for more details on the ongoing eruption, check the webpage of the nordic volcanological institute at the university of Iceland, or this site showing various satellite images and animations of the evolution of the plume. And just in case you wanted to see a little photographic summary of the eruption that started on March 20th, here a very nice collection of 18 pictures.

Some of the most impressive images of the current explosive eruption can be found on Stromboli Online - where I found the image at the beginning of this post. I have been wondering what causes lightning in eruption clouds, so I did a little research on this topic. It seems that the mechanisms are quite different to those leading to thunderstorms, and obviously the processes occuring in the eruption plume are rather complex and not fully understood - and only few studies have been published on the topic. I found a lot of useful information in a recent journal article talking about it (James, M.R. et al., 2008, Electric Charging of Volcanic Plumes, Space Science Reviews, Vol, 137, pp. 399-418). I don't understand at all the details of the article, but my understanding of it is, in a nutshell: There is a difference in electric charge between the bottom and the top of the eruption plume. The charging itself happens primarily due to two processes: Electromagnetic emissions due particles interacting with each other, or when particles break; and the very rapid disruption of water surfaces (by boiling of water, for instance when water (or ice!) hits molten rocks at about 1200C. I did not know that boiling water causes charging! But it is somehow linked to the fact that water molecules are strongly polar, i.e. there is a difference in electrical charge between the oxygen atom and the two hydrogen atoms). When the difference in charge reaches some threshold, lighning occurs. (If anyone who reads this thinks I am totally off the mark, please do let me know!!). Confusing, but beautiful!

Oh, and in case you were wondering how the CO2 put out to the atmosphere by Eyjafjallajokull compared to that "saved" by canceling 60% of flights in Europe: On average in one normal day, close to 350'000 tons of CO2 are released by commercial flights in Europe. The current situation saves about 206'000 tons of CO2 - compare it to a mere 15'000t produced by Eyjafjallajokull... (Here the website where I got that from).