Iceland's Largest Eruption of 2023-24 Continues: Geologist Analysis

hi there and welcome to another update on the volcanic eruption going on in Iceland I am geology Professor sha Willy today is Monday August 26 it's about 9:30 a.m. here in Idaho 3:30 p.m. over in Iceland and our eruption is now on day five since it began last Thursday August 22nd and the activity has been is concentrated at the Northeast end of the Fisher system just like we saw the last few days it's diminished considerably in intensity over what we saw during that initial day or so of the eruption but we're going to run through some of the data there's a new update from the Met Office which has some great information along with a map of the flow field which I'm always excited and anxious to see and so let's just get started here so you can see through the webcam here the more or less extent of the eruption as it currently stands looks like this leftmost vent might be a little bit angled or is partially blocked cuz it's jetting lava a little bit at a little bit of an oblique angle here instead of straight up um and so we still have this small section of the fisser system that seems to be active and so this Ridge of material built up here it's not really a true spatter cone because we have more than one vent when we get to just one primary vent and that lava that's being jetted out starts to become distributed more or less symmetrically or close to symmetrically around that vent that's when we see a true spatter cone forming right now this is what we' call a spatter ramp part it's more of like a ridge a linear Ridge of uh material in this case lava that's been jetted out falls back down to the ground and just sticks and starts to accumulate this this material is something we call a gluten at once it accumulates on the ground here so you can see the extent of the eruption right now um estimates of the height of this spatter ramp part are anywhere from like 20 to I think 40 or so meters tall uh kind of a rough estimate I'm sure maybe get some better ones going on and some of these fountains go up maybe uh 80 M or so into the air um something like that I haven't I didn't check that right before so you can probably hunt around the different webcams and chats and get some different estimates there um but you can see the activity as it stands right now I think there are still some Moss fires burning associated with the lava flow and so let's look at one more view here so a couple of views here on the life from Iceland camera can't see much here in the distance um except for some of the gas coming out this is uh St stoelt here the hill that you're looking along the uh the flank of and then you can see some of the jetting here here it kind of looks like one specific vent but that's because you're kind of seeing you're looking along the trend or along the axis of the actual fissures there so let's get right to the web uh the Met Office update excuse me let me make that a little bit long larger for you so this just came out literally a few minutes ago as I Was preparing this update so good timing uh and this appears to be based on their estimat the largest eruption in this area along this lineament that we've seen you know since its activity began last fall the largest in terms of the volume um of lava that's been erupted so this appears to be so far bigger than the other eruptions we've seen so uh beginning of the eruption uh estimate the lava flow is around, 1500 to 2,000 cubic SEC cubic meters per second now it's obviously slowed down quite a bit um so just like all the other eruptions it starts with the bang tremendous amount of lava erupts along the length of that four five six kilometer Fisher then things start to die down to what we see going on today um yeah the so the thickness of the lava about 40 cm or so so a half a meter uh that's probably average over the whole area um um all measurements indicate this eruption will be the biggest since fall 2023 they've got the area of the lava bed estimated about 15.1 I'm assuming that's square kilometers um and then I think the the gases and and the winds carrying that those gases off to the South as it has the past few days uh I'll get to the map here in a second uh all measurements show it's the largest since fall 2023 um eruption continues in the area Northeast of St stoga Feld so that area that far Northeast end of the Fisher system um during the last day the activities become somewhat isolated in one area north of that fisher um so let's take a look at the flow field map here quickly let me get that a good size so we can kind of take that in maybe start with the big view here uh and you can see let go a little bit further out so here's gvic down at the end you can see the various colors of purple and gray but the brightest purple here is the extent of the flow field from this most recent eruption the red line here is the area where the Fisher is still erupting remember when this opened up on August 22nd we had a more or less throughgoing or or series of fissures that extended from here uh all the way just a little bit south of SE lingerfelt down to about this point here thankfully none of those lava flows because this was directed further to the north we didn't see a lot of that lava moving south towards a good end of it so um this the town very much has been safe since the eruption began because of the location and the direction of those flows some of these lobes initially uh when the eruption started we saw lava flow lobes advancing to the West and Northwest looked like they were going to cover the roadway and possibly present a issue to the power plant in the Blue Lagoon but after 12 hours you know 24 hours into the eruption the that fisher system kind of waned in terms of its output and the the Lion Share of the activity whoops was concentrated here in the north so you can see here where the flow field from this fisure has kind of wrapped around uh this area here and also this here there's one um topographic feature here L scelt um that sticks up and so it's kind of wrapped around you know I guess 2third of it under this part here these loes are advancing slowly to the north and a little bit to the west but quite slow and there's quite a bit of big open ground here so my guess is that a lot of this will just sort of fan out uh and it's not going to advance rapidly towards either this roadway here or the primary road to the north let me switch views here to kind of show you a bigger view since the Met Office map cuts off a little bit here so I don't have the lava flow field on here yet but the primary location where we're seeing the eruption taking place now is this little section right here uh to the north East and so we've got lava flowing around this hill lless skelt um and probably about to this point here so this is more or less the northern extent of our lava flow field and it's still quite a you know several kilometers distance out to the main road here this is the the road primary Road in Iceland that takes people to in from the airport uh it connects uh this area of kfic and some of these towns here in the airport with rikic and other parts of Iceland there so um still you know early enough that it's something to keep an eye on but just based on the output of of the The Volcano as it currently stands and just looking at some of this topography here it's very doubtful that the lava flows would make it that far um we'll have to wait and see anything's on the table but that's what that would be my best guess right now this is a very flat mostly flat open area there is of course a regional slope down uh towards the coast here but it's quite gentle and so there's a lot of room for that lava to kind of fan out spread out and it's always more difficult to get that lava flowing farther at its distal end when the vent is way back here of course we know it can do that with um Lava Tube systems where it crusts over on the surface uh so again still early still a hazard but I'd say a fairly low risk at this point of anything like that taking place uh let's go back to the Met Office update they've got some more stuff here um they talk a little bit about the output here right now it's probably only several tens of cubic meters per second that's down quite a bit from the initial output when the eruption began of close to upwards of 2,000 cubic meters per second um so it's a small fraction of what it was when it began uh they talk a little bit about the thickness of the lava and the aerial extension of the lava and so they calculate that about 17 to 27 million cubic meters of magma have left the the storage system in the subsurface the magma body uh since the eruption began so it's actually erupted a good chunk I mean more well well over half of what was originally down there um so it's erupted quite a bit we'll get to the GPS data later so we'll just kind of skip through that um what else do we have here um will not it's not possible to State about the continued flow of magma until the magma accumulation area until land is visible again not quite sure what they're saying there um yeah earthquake activity is low and then they talk a little bit about the winds and then there's an update to the risk assessment map with basically that fiser region and along that Northeast Trend there that being the primary concerned and that's the highest hazard level with these two red areas adjacent to it uh slightly elevated so there's the Met Office update and I'll make sure I put a link to that in the description uh there was also a great uh 360 drone shot that was put together uh by hoer christon um and his name's right here I probably butchered his name but this is a nice view here here we are looking to the South so here's the erupting Fisher this was taken on the 24th so this was on Saturday a couple days ago so you can see more of the vents and Fishers active at this time this of course has died down a little bit and we're really just seeing a much shorter section of this segment uh erupting still right now but here's the gases good indic way off in the distance can't even quite see it Blue Lagoon and the power plant over here you can see all the Moss fires here along the edges of the lava flow where it's um igniting the the the Moss and maybe some of the grasses there as well uh here's where some of the lava went around uh lless gelt here airport out in the distance so that's the view to the west and now we'll swing around to the north the town of vogar you can see the coast there um again the Leading Edge of the lava flows where the Moss fires are strong winds from the north on Saturday and then kind of swinging around to the Northeast rovic off in the distance this prominent Peak here ker uh and then looking to the east at the frago dfield area over in this region so great job uh from ho for this nice image that we're able to kind of see everything you can just kind of grab it drag it and pull it and kind of check it all out 360 view very cool um let's see what else uh let's check out earthquakes so um last 24 hours um let's start in the eruption area typical of what you'd expect to see you know when it's still erupting mostly very small earthquakes although there is one uh maybe it's gone now maybe it was over 24 hours ago there was one too but I think it was maybe yesterday so it's not included in this data set but there's five magnitude one and above Quakes in the last 24 hours and then if we add all we see a few more but um you know it's an ongoing eruption things there's there's collapsing there's there's changes in the conduit system all of these uh likely responsible for some of these small magnitude Quakes that we're seeing here uh and then we did have in the last 24 hours UNR related to the ongoing eruption uh was a larger 3.6 Quake very deep um well for this area you know over 7 kilometers depth over here east of Lake clat um and just a bit east of this kishik system this system of volcanoes in this region here so uh and then lots of probably aftershocks um reactions to this bigger quake in this region here so nothing about this says that it's magmatic or related to magma movement um and here's where the eruption zone is here when we look at the past week or so and I did some of this analysis on our last update but the colors on this just showed up so nicely I thought we would maybe revisit this again um so remember that the size of the circle is the size of the earthquake bigger the circle bigger the magnitude how big are these big ones here well that biggest circle you can see there was a four or 4.1 that occurred the day of the eruption so most of these are pretty small but what we can see here with the color coding is this is the uh when it occurred so Blues would be about a week ago getting into greens and yellows that would be about four or five days ago uh and then as you get into yellows oranges and reds that would be within the last uh three or three or two or one days and what you can see here is uh a week ago which would have been before the eruption you can see a lot of the earthquakes kind of distributed uh somewhat scattered a bit down in this region here and then once we got into the eruption proper or just before the eruption you can see more of these kind of greenish yellow Quakes concentrated um at the South End of the Fisher system just here next to Selinger felt here at the East End of St stoelt and then up here is where the eruption ended up really concentrating uh and we saw that dyke actually propagate up to the north and open a new pathway as that new Fisher system moved to the Northeast on on last Thursday and going into Friday here's the small little Hill lla SKF here um and then today's eruptions over the last day or two would be all these red and orange Quakes here so you can see a lot of those just concentrated right in this little region here um so that's where we're at with earthquakes in the region um these will probably continue these small magnitude Quakes right around the eruption site while that's ongoing but overall we expect to see earthquakes uh and earthquake activity dissipate a little bit so we'll probably see a few more days of this pattern which can look alarming when you just see all the yellow there but when we kind of weed out um you know those tiny earthquakes it it doesn't look quite as ominous um and that's what we might see moving forward a bit GPS data um shows what you would typically what we've typically come to know is true for these systems where we have the initial let's get to the 4our run here uh let's start with that one I guess so here is the inflation that was going on throughout July a little Gap in the data here when things were offline uh continued inflation you can see this steady rise this is the elevation of this GPS station up and down so it's moving upward so it's in is more magmas moving into the ground that's causing the land to literally rise above it and we see not just at this GPS station but at a dozen or more in this region um and then you can see when the eruption began here last Thursday as magma left the subsurface system and moved up to the surface com coming out of the ground as lava you can see where this dropped down and so we had a down drop here and it might Trend down just a I mean there's a little bit of a downward Trend here but eventually this will probably turn around and move back up because we have no evidence so far that suggests that more magma is not moving into that shallow storage Zone from depth uh it's what we've seen in the past and in fact just to kind of remind you of how this looks big picture let's go to um the spart the same station but let's look at it over a oneyear time period and just look at like what this looks like um over time so here is down here on the bottom here we are back in last fall so literally a year ago no movement at all then magma started to move into this um shallow subsurface magma storage Zone you can see the uplift the inflation that culminated on November 10th with the flurry of earthquakes and magma injecting itself into a subsurface Dyke an actual vertical curtain if you will of magma that trended Southwest Northeast so then the ground dropped a little bit quite a bit actually um and then it started inflating again as more magma was being pumped into that system that culminated with the December 18th eruption another one on January 14th small hiccup here not is in a little little bit different location so the Dow drop was not as pronounced uh the February 8th eruption right here March uh 16th if I'm getting my dates right uh May 29th and then notice the May 29th one there's this little hook here right so it actually showed some deflation initially but then it turned into a strong inflationary Trend that continued through the summer up until last Thursday August 22nd when we saw uh the eruption begin so we're right here at this point and it's very likely that this these next set of points over the next few weeks and possibly months will largely mirror what we saw after the May 29th eruption and so uh until there's any evidence to the contrary that would be the best uh hypothesis for what we're going to see moving forward so some of the GPS data um the interferogram looks pretty cool for this time period as well so if we choose this one here so they satellite went over the area on the 17th of August which was before the eruption when we were in a state of inflation right and then the satellite went over the area again yesterday on August 25th so if you think about well what's happened between August 17th and August 25th a time frame of 8 days well we had an eruption so the land was swelling it was it was high on the 17th then we had the big eruption on August 22nd and so the land has sunk since then that's what we see with all of these GPS uh measurements here and so the satellite goes over the area bounces uh radar waves off of the ground um and so it detects the distance and then it goes over again on the 25th to detect the distance and it's of such a um precise uh scale in terms of measuring that it can measure even these small differences and so what we get here is this really cool view of the with the interferogram and so here this is more or less the center of the uplift we saw um well we had uplift but then it deflated right so after the eruption all the magma moved out well a lot of the magma excuse me moved out of this subsurface storage system and was erupted over here so here you see a nice clear Bullseye each one of these colored fringes represents a certain amount of vertical motion up or down in this case it's down so you can see how much there is here in terms of down drop uh and then it gets a little murky over here because this is where the eruption was so notice these nice colored rainbow fringes uh start to get a little bit distorted in this area and that's because this is where the lava came out of the ground you can actually sort of make out the extent of the lava field on the interferogram you can trace out this distorted where it sort of interrupts the nice colored uh pattern here that shows you uh more or less where the lava field is because the lava field would be putting more putting lava on the ground building up the land some places are a little low some places are a little high and that's why it's quite messy here but you can actually more or less make out um in a very improved manner the extent of that that uh flow field on the interferogram which is very cool so uh cool looking at that data there so um anyway I think that's about all I have for our update today we will continue to monitor things looking forward what do we expect what what should we be looking for I think the webcams are going to give you the best view of just the conditions of if any folks get drones up like Isaac you could watch some of the footage of flying over the vents we can see what changes might take place I would expect that possibly these uh multiple vents that we're seeing here there's a little one down here U might coagulate and concentrate into one single vent as the eruption uh volume wanes over the next few days and then we might start seeing a more um symmetrical aesthetically pleasing spatter cone develop moving forward but for now we have these cool spatter ramp parts we have multiple vents erupting lava that lava's piling up building up the sides of this thing we might see pieces of it collapse remember these spatter cones and spatter ramp parts are a constructive and destructive process that kind of goes back and forth the Lava Falls on the the area around the vent builds up these cones or ramp Parts but then they can get too heavy they're not structurally very stable they can collapse the vent itself can undermine and compromise uh some of the slopes and so you can see things collapse back into the vent so there could be inward collapse there could be outward collapse lots of cool things could happen here as we just kind of watch this uh spectacle take place over the next few days and potentially week so um other than that watching the GPS and watching to see if we start seeing that that uptick if if we if we turn around this slight deflationary Trend and if it starts to become more of an inflation inflationary Trend that will be clear evidence that we have more magma in the deeper Zone that's pumping back into that magma storage Zone and then once this eruption dies down and and ends uh then we'll be more or less resetting the clock for the next eruption which could be you know most likely months away could be weeks away we'll just kind of have to see how things look um also maybe checking to make sure these lava flows that are very slowly creeping to the north let's see if those actually fan out or um are they going to maybe do something a little a little more crazy and maybe follow some Channel and make more um direct progress towards the roadways that's worst case scenario but that's Bears watching as well so lots to keep track of in the next few days and weeks to come I'll provide these updates as best I can as we move forward hopefully these were helpful to you help you understand what's going on and I appreciate your support of the channel thanks for being a learner here along with me and we'll see see you next time take care