A volcano erupted in Iceland on Friday, primarily turning the night time sky right into a real-life lava lamp.
No accidents have been reported. Just pleasure — and the odd visitors jam.
The eruption occurred on Friday night close to Mount Fagradalsfjall, about 20 miles southwest of the capital, Reykjavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said on Twitter. The company mentioned that the lava fountains have been small by volcano requirements, and that seismometers weren’t recording a lot turbulence.
“It’s a small eruption flowing from a small fissure,” mentioned Páll Einarsson, a professor emeritus of geophysics on the University of Iceland, concerning the fissure. “It’s quite harmless and we don’t expect any damage, not even ash clouds that could disrupt flight traffic.”
Mr. Einarsson mentioned consultants couldn’t predict how the eruption would evolve, however the meteorological workplace said on Saturday that the volcanic exercise had already decreased.
And it was nothing just like the eruption in 2010 of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, which spewed a lot ash that it grounded flights across parts of Europe for weeks.
Still, the eruption that began on Friday is “quite a big deal,” in response to Elísabet Pálmadóttir, a pure hazard specialist on the Icelandic Meteorological Office. “It’s one of the smallest eruptions we’ve ever seen, yes, but we haven’t had an eruption there in 800 years, and it’s close to capital and to the airport,” she mentioned.
A lot of individuals have been excited. (A livestream of the eruption was additionally made accessible.)
“YESSS !! , eruption !!” the Icelandic singer Björk wrote on Facebook and Instagram, noting that she had as soon as filmed a music video on the web site.
“We in iceland are sooo excited !!!” she added. “We still got it !!! sense of relief when nature expresses herself !!!”
The eruption capped an unusually busy spell of seismic activity in southwestern Iceland that started round December 2019. The earthquake swarm began on Feb. 24 with a 5.7-magnitude quake, and tens of 1000’s of quakes have since adopted, with as much as 3,000 in simply at some point earlier this month. Although a lot of the swarms remained small in magnitude, their frequency led scientists to imagine that an eruption may very well be imminent.
There is an extended historical past of volcanic exercise in Iceland, which has greater than 30 lively volcanoes. The nation straddles two tectonic plates, that are themselves divided by an undersea mountain chain that oozes molten sizzling rock, or magma. Quakes happen when the magma pushes by means of the plates.
“It confirms the nature of the activity we monitored in the past few weeks,” Dr. Einarsson mentioned concerning the eruption. “Increased seismic activity can mean magma movement and can augur eruptions.”
But it’s uncommon to see quakes in and across the better Reykjavik space, the place a lot of the nation’s 368,000 residents stay.
Scientists at the moment are getting ready for what may very well be a long time of elevated exercise: they’ve noticed that the volcanoes in southwestern Iceland grow to be lively roughly each 800 years, and that eruptions can then happen for as much as 200 years.
For the primary one, nevertheless, volcanologists and seismologists have mentioned for weeks that they didn’t count on exercise on the order of the 2010 quake on the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, and that the looming eruption would most likely bubble out with out a lot explosive drive.
“People in Reykjavik are waking up with an earthquake, others go to sleep with an earthquake,” Thorvaldur Thordarson, a professor of volcanology on the University of Iceland, mentioned in an interview this month. “There’s a lot of them, and that worries people, but there’s nothing to worry about, the world is not going to collapse.”
He was proper.
The eruption close to Mount Fagradalsfjall on Friday did pose a number of inconveniences, together with visitors jams and issues concerning the potential for volcanic air pollution in the Reykjavik space. Iceland’s worldwide airport, 12 miles northwest of the positioning of the eruption, remained open.
Yet they nonetheless warned folks to not go close to the lava and to remain indoors with the home windows closed.
“The area of the eruption is considered very dangerous,” the Icelandic meteorological workplace mentioned in an announcement on Saturday. “The eruption site can change without notice and put people at risk unexpectedly.”
It added there was no obvious manufacturing of ash — which may trigger extra disruptions — and that the gasoline emissions have been unlikely to trigger main discomfort.
Instead, the eruption, which lovers world wide had been eagerly anticipating for weeks, has largely been a trigger for celebration.
“It started!!!!” Joël Ruch, a volcanologist on the University of Geneva, wrote on Twitter because the lava began flowing slowly southwest, away from Reykjavik.
“First photo of the eruption! Wow!” wrote Sigridur Kristjansdottir, a seismologist in Iceland. Nonspecialists additionally expressed excitement on-line.
The colours in the sky have been certainly spectacular. Imagine the Northern Lights, however in blood orange as a substitute of the same old electrical inexperienced. Or the glowing orbs of an early Mark Rothko canvas.
Or Björk’s orange hair, circa 2011, a number of years earlier than she filmed her music video in the neighborhood of Mount Fagradalsfjall.
For native residents, the eruption additionally introduced some aid.
“We’ve been having earthquakes for the past three weeks,” Ms. Pálmadóttir, from the Icelandic Meteorological Office, mentioned concerning the earthquakes, which included half a dozen above a magnitude of 5. “People were getting pretty tired, we were a bit suspended and were all waiting for the eruption.”
Ms. Pálmadóttir added, “People can hopefully sleep a bit better now.”
