A volcano near the Icelandic village of Grindavík erupted on Sunday morning. On live images lava can be seen spewing from a fracture in the ground and flowing towards the edge of the village. Local authorities have evacuated Grindavík for the second time since November and declared a state of emergency.
In the early hours of Sunday, local authorities measured an “intense series” of more than 200 tremors. Together with GPS measurements and pressure measurements by a local energy company, those quakes showed that magma was moving underground. A magma tunnel of about 15 kilometers long runs in the ground beneath Grindavík.
Inactive for centuries
An eruption in 2021 ended centuries of inactivity of the volcanoes on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Up to this Sunday, there have been five eruptions in the area, including one just shy of a month ago. So far, it has not been about explosive volcanic eruptions such as at Mount St. Helens in 1980, but about fractures in the ground from which lava emerges.
That doesn’t mean this eruption is harmless. The break in the ground runs past a wall under construction, which is precisely intended to keep lava away from Grindavík. According to the Icelandic Weather Institute, the southernmost point of the fault is about nine hundred meters from the village.
Also read
Icelandic volcanic eruption unfolds in slow motion