Reader Peter called my attention to the spectacular nighttime shots of the erupting Icelandic volcano. Here’s the video of the livefeed, and it’s dark in Iceland now, so check it out:
Check out the VolcanoCam
March 22, 2021 • 5:20 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
I know it’s 25 miles (40 km) from Reykjavik, but that seems a little bit close for comfort?
Islanders a referring to the event as a tourism eruption; but don’t go too near.
Guess that’s the price you have to pay for living on top of a high bit of a sea floor spreading ridge. After all, if it were otherwise, Iceland would be just another bit of underwater basalt. I doubt that the Vikings would have built there had they set sail with any geologists on board.
It’s been fascinating to follow the earthquake swarms leading up to the eruption on the Last Quake app along with watching Nick Zentner’s CWU geology course online. Pretty amazing stuff, at least for a guy living in the middle of a continent, far from any tectonic boundaries.
(Shhh! don’t tell him about New Madrid.)
And there are two major suburbs (by Icelandic population comparisons) which I’m sure from the map have many people living a lot closer than that.
Also the town of Keflavik closer and Grindavik within 10 km.
But it’s only poisonous gasses (flouride-something-or-other) that are of concern. And a ‘big’ expert says that is so far minimal, and likely will remain so.
Fluoride – most likely as hydrogen fluoride – is implicated as a toxic agent in one of the nastier Mediaeval eruptions, but I’m not sure what the evidential basis for that is (versus, say, ash with a few hundred ppm of water-soluble fluoride). Sulphur dioxide is a much more common damaging vent gas, and just plain ash can be very damaging without any significant gas (say, if it falls out of a high eruption column while the gases remain buoyantly hot).
But the Icelanders seem pretty relaxed about this, and they’re in the right place to comment.
From today’s update :
That’s about 8ppm, which would be moderately smelly, but probably wouldn’t concern anyone who wasn’t already asthmatic. (8ppm of H2S, on the other hand, and often confused, would give considerably more grounds for concern. Which is why SOP for sour blowouts is to torch the well while preparing a proper kill.)
Neat
This may already have been shared but some nice drone footage. https://youtu.be/dFUa8yAnD6s
Cool!
Very cool, Diana, thank you. I’ve also had the live cam open 24/7 since it came online.
I’ve lived in NZ and Japan – both seismically lively places and have been a bit of a volcano geek since I was a kid.
cheers,
D.A.
NYC
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
Great videos.
I’m amused that, for Canuck me anyway, the Brit’s accent makes it far harder for me to pick up every word than those from the Icelander speaking English.
How did Churchspear (or Shakehill – I can never remember which was which) put it? “Never have three countries been so divided by sharing a common language.”
Woah – no replies.
Doesn’t serve up to iPhone/iOS 12 – says device isn’t allowed or something.
^^….Never mind – it works from this page.