Katla – possible small eruption?

Posted by Steinn Sigurðsson on July 9, 2011
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Cratering of ice sheet and possible small eruption under ice.



click to embiggen
Crater in ice over one of sites of the 1918 eruption – four of these formed overnight.

Lot of shallow quakes still in a line across the caldera – some might be ice-surface cracking, others are several km deep. Could be magma pushing into a fissure, angle is consistent with the general orientation of the mid-atlantic rift through there.
Or not.
Be quite spectacular if that whole line ruptures though.



click to embiggen

Nice picture gallery at visir.is

Video of flood here (ruv 32 bit wmv) – can’t get it to load right now, slashdotted

Jón still best source for live info


Nice perspective along Múlakvísl


TV report with heli footage of bridge and road outage – gonna be tough to fix this one.

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Comments

  1. #1 Ticker
    July 9, 2011

    It’s a good thing I’m not on another continent right now.

    I’d be really nervous about being stuck, otherwise.

    Though we’ll just have to wait and see how big it really gets. Too bad we don’t yet know to perfectly predict volcanic events.

  2. #2 Omega Centauri
    July 10, 2011

    I was struck by the layer of dirt (ash) on the surface, and much cleaner ice below. Is that layer from last years Eya.. eruption? The ice cap would not appear to be anywhere near an equilibrium configuration (i.e. why is there a lot of dirt on top)?