To get access to the eruptive site at Holuhraun, one either has to be a part of the research team or a registered member of the press. That, I am not, but the good people over at The Reykjavík Grapevine are. In a recent article, they describe their ill-fated attempt to gain access to the site - thwarted by the gas. Much of the article consequently focuses on their interviews with the researchers, equally held at bay from the site by the plume.
(Credit: Matthew Eisman)
I recommend reading it (like all Grapevine articles, it's in English), but here's an excerpt:
When I ask him about the future, he’s quick to say that he’s not in the business of looking into a crystal ball. “We’re trying to collect the best information possible so that the authorities can react and advise the public,” he explains. “It doesn’t make sense to tell all Icelanders to close their windows because there’s poison gas coming from the eruption. Then you would have everyone in the Westfjords closing their windows, though the gases weren’t there.”
Speaking of gas again, Ármann does not mince his words. “Due to southerly winds yesterday, the poisonous gases lay over us, and it’s not healthy to sleep in this stuff, so we left. We aren’t there to kill ourselves. We’re there to try to get information,” he says. “If you go in, you’ll have to have gas masks, and it’s at your own risk. If you die, you just die. We can’t help you there.”
He continues: “We are fully prepared to find people lying there, and in that case we’ll just call the police, give them the GPS coordinates, and they’ll come get the body,” he says. “We ourselves are battling to stay alive. The rule is that can’t go further than five minutes from the car. If you’re fifteen minutes away, we’re not going to wait. In this case, it’s not ‘all for one, one for all'"
By the end of our chat, it’s clear we aren’t going anywhere but home. “I’m not in charge,” he says when we ask him if he thinks the area will open later today. “It’s up to the sheriff in Húsavík, but I’m not going to go in, so I won’t be giving him any information about the gas. If it’s anything like it was yesterday, it’s disgusting, but I mean if you want bronchitis or something, you can go in.”
Despite being only on the border of the (very large) closed area and being upwind, one researcher was still complaining about symptoms. It's a pretty bad situation.
But the situation is far worse elsewhere at the moment. Join us below for today's edition of Eldfjallavakt.
(Credit: Matthew Eisman)
The eruption on Holuhraun continues. Its gas continues. The quakes and subsidence in the caldera continue. The spread of the lava field continues. None of this will surprise any of our regular readers.
But one thing on the other side of the world surprised everyone: the eruption of Ontake-san, Japan's second highest volcano.
(Credit: Toshihiko Kawaguchi)
I last saw Ontake-san (Pronunciation: "on-tah-keh-sawn") in 2005 while on a train from Nagoya to Matsumoto, beyond the fog laying in the Kiso valley. Had I had more time, I had considered climbing it, but it was not to be. For me, it was just a quick glimpse through a break in the mist, and then it was gone. This eruption too, came and calmed in an instant.
By any standard, this was a rather small explosion. Small amounts of ejected matter, a little plume, and it's down to just a moderate steam plume today. It's quite possible that magma might not even have been involved - there is talk that this might have been a phreatic explosion, a steam explosion from superheated groundwater. This would explain the main problem: why there was no warning. There was no magma on the move. No earthquakes. No closures.
And a consequence, dozens are dead.
More than 500 police, soldiers, and firefighters are involved in the search and rescue effort. They have described over 30 people as being in "respiratory and cardiac arrest", a customary way in Japan of saying that they are dead, in addition to four confirmed dead already. This would make it the world's worst volcanic death toll since 2010's eruption of Indonesia's Mount Merapi and the worst in Japan since Mt. Unzen in 1991. Many more were on the mountain but survived by taking shelter in buildings overnight.
Ash inhalation can be a nasty thing, one that we're hoping doesn't become a problem here in Iceland. Note however that it would take a large caldera eruption for this to be dangerous to the people of Austfirðir, on the scale of Askja's caldera forming event of 1875 that lead to so much abandonment of the east.
Right now, only small amounts of ash are being produced, among vast, vast quantities of lava.
The 800 tonnes of lava per second have now poured out across 44,2 square kilometers.
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
A quick specific heat calculation (given 1400kJ/kg for the cooling lava) suggests that the total heat output is around an impressive 1 terawatt, sustained now for nearly a month. While only a tiny fraction of this would ever be recoverable (rather than being simply lost to air, ground, water, and space), I really hope we tap this energy source in the future, as was done in Vestmannaeyjar after the Heimaey eruption, and cancel some of the hydroelectric projects that are out there.
I've developed an animation to show the progress the lava has taken so far, incorporating the latest map:
Unfortuately, the latest map doesn't show what's happened in the past couple days - and to make it worse, the latest maps don't show a tongue that's on the south side any more (I'm assuming that it's simply because they don't know what's there, so I left it in). The availability of new map data is limited by what sort of access the scientists can get to the site on any given day. Well, that and infrared:
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
Heat is always the name of the game on the lava field... but is it also playing a role in the subsidence? Haraldur Sigurðsson thinks it's a possibility that geothermal heat from the magma in the caldera and/or small eruptions is melting ice and contributing to the subsidence. He doesn't mention what he thinks is subsequently happening to the water - perhaps flowing out into the groundwater system, as is one theory for what happened last time? This is all hypothetical of course.
Haraldur also talks about the big down and up "hops" in the caldera subsidence graph, as if they're real, legitimate data:
I had always assumed that these were data glitches, but he seems to think that they're legitimate, possibly from the glacier breaking as well as subsiding. I'd be interested in hearing what other scientists think about this.
Gas forecasts yesterday called for a late night hit on Höfn (rough pronunciation: "Hup"), with it moving north by morning, but we know how unaccurate the forecasts are. It's uncertain whether it ever actually got to Höfn. Two regular readers who were staying in Höfn said that at least in the morning it was clear. They sent in this picture of the volcano's plume over Vatnajökull, 110 kilometers away:
Rather than pics of Bárðarbunga / Holuhraun / Þorbjargarhraun, today's pictures will be of Ontake-san, as a reminder how dangerous even a volcano with no warning signs can sometimes be.
(Credit: Keystone)
(Credit: Keystone)
(Credit: Jiji Press / AFP / Getty Images)
(Credit: AP)
(Credit: AP / Kyodo News)
(Credit: Reuters / Kyodo News)
(Credit: Reuters)
(Credit: Reuters)
(Credit: Keystone)
(Credit: AP / Kyodo News)
(Credit: Japan Crush)
(Credit: Reuters)
(Credit: AP / Kyoto News)
(Credit: Keystone)
Plus one video from Euronews:
And one Youtube video from a hiker: