Are Iceland’s volcanoes about to erupt?
Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula. Image: Getty Images
More than 20,000 earthquakes have shaken southern Iceland this week, rattling the capital city of Reykjavik and keeping geologists on their toes as all signs point to a pending volcanic eruption, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) reported on Thursday (March 4).
This week’s marathon of quakes continues a swarm of seismic activity that began on Feb. 24, when a 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck near Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula — about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the capital city.
Earthquakes in the 5.0- to 5.9-magnitude range are considered moderate, and can result in slight damage to nearby buildings, according to Michigan Technological University. Fortunately, the quake’s epicenter was far enough from the island’s populated areas that no damage or injuries were reported.
The vast majority of the thousands of quakes that have followed the Feb. 24 event have been minor, with only two temblors registering above magnitude 5.0, according to the IMO. Still, residents of Reykjavik have felt the shaking day after day, with some “waking up with an earthquake, others [going] to sleep with an earthquake,” Thorvaldur Thordarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland, told The New York Times.
While disconcerting, there is “nothing to worry about,” Thordarson added, as the quakes have all been minor and distant enough to leave Reykjavik unharmed. (Meanwhile, the IMO issued a warning of increased landslide risk on the Reykjanes Peninsula, but had no further guidance for city-dwellers.)
In the past, seismic swarms like this one have been observed ahead of volcanic eruptions in southern Iceland, according to the IMO. Magma movement at the boundary where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet likely caused the tremors, the agency said, which could fuel the five active volcanoes on the Reykjanes Peninsula.
If any of southern Iceland’s volcanoes do blow their tops in the coming weeks, the eruptions will be both expected and manageable. According to Thordarson, southern Iceland’s volcanoes experience “pulses” of activity every 800 years or so, and the last pulse occurred between the 11th and 13th centuries. Iceland is “on time” for another eruption cycle, he added.
Like the earthquakes, these potential eruptions should also pose little threat to the inhabitants of Iceland. Such eruptions would look nothing like the explosive 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which sent an ash column more than 5 miles (9 km) into the sky, forced hundreds of people to evacuate and halted European air traffic for six days, volcanologist Dave McGarvie wrote in The Conversation.
“Eruptions in southwest Iceland are of a fluid rock type called basalt. This results in slow-moving streams of lava fed from gently exploding craters and cones,” wrote McGarvie, of Lancaster University in Lancashire, England. “In Iceland, these are warmly called ‘tourist eruptions’ as they are relatively safe and predictable.”
Currently, tourists entering Iceland are subject to a five-day quarantine period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so hopeful volcano watchers will have move fast, or settle for the webcam view.
See more here: www.livescience.com
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
This morning I discovered first ZEROHEDGE and now LIVESCIENCE websites writing articles of scientific topics. This article began: “More than 20,000 earthquakes have shaken southern Iceland this week, rattling the capital city of Reykjavik and keeping geologists on their toes”. It is the phrase “keeping geologists on their toes” which grapped my attention. What can geologists have to do with the possibility that an Iceland volcano might erupt. But the headline implies more than one might erupt some even if the the first statement refers to the possibility that one might erupt.
This time I did go to Livescience.com and I could not find a stated purpose of this website.com
PSI is a private website (hence .org) with a clearly stated purpose of informing its readers of articles that could not published in peer-reviewed scientific journals in 2012 (or 2013). I conclude that these .com websites are trying to generate economical activity by luring readers to read about science (a popular topic). But I really do not know because neither .com website clearly stated what its purpose was. But I did fid advertisements at xxx.com which you do not find at PSI.org.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi James McGinn,
This might interest you.
!. link livescience. 2. go to Planet Earth. 3. go to Exotic Crystals of ‘ice 19’ 4. read about four-sided crystals of this rare ice variety.
The only four-sided crystal I know about is a tetrahedron. Read about the laboratory conditions used to form it. Beyond a four-sided crystal I understand nothing.
Have a good day, Jerry
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James McGinn
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Thanks Jerry,
Jerry:
!. link livescience. 2. go to Planet Earth. 3. go to Exotic Crystals of ‘ice 19’ 4. read about four-sided crystals of this rare ice variety.
https://www.livescience.com/exotic-ice-19-discovered.html
JMcG:
It’s always so strange to see how thoroughly researchers are confused by their stubborn resolve to not consider the possibility that their fundamental assumptions might be the source of their persistent confusion.
Livescience:
Loerting explained that the structure of water ice is a key to the nature of the hydrogen bond, which is imperfectly understood.
JMcG:
With hydrogen bonding between water molecules there is an inverse relationship between its orderliness (this “orderliness” being symmetry [both tetrahedral symmetry {oxygen} and simple symmetry {hydrogen}]) and its disorderliness (assymetry, again, both tetrahedral and simple) relative to the strength (magnitude) of it polarity. Ice involves the disorderliness being locked in (which happens naturally at lower temperatures and is defeated at ambient temperatures) by the structure that emerges with the ensuing increase in polarity that can occur at lower temperatures. Liquid water has low polarity (except along the surface where the geometry of the surface dictates reduction of symmetry of “surface tension” causing higher polarity). And this is the result of it being more symmetric than ice, causing lower polarity. (Note: when interpreting the previous sentences take care to not to assume that the concepts of structure and symmetry are interchangeable. If you find yourself confused this is mostly likely the reason why.)
Livescience:
And there are still many more polymorphs of ice out there. The discovery of ice XIX makes six ice polymorphs discovered at the University of Innsbruck since the 1980s, and Loerting hopes his team will discover the next one, too. “The race for ice XX started yesterday, and I hope my research group will be the one to publish it,” he said.
JMcG:
This notion that there are discreet “polymorphs” (ie. Bernal and Fowler) of ice is misguided. There are differences in strength associated with different levels of disorderliness and there can also be other nonconformities associated with pockets therein, but there really is no such thing as discreet “polymorphs”, as is currently hypothesized/assumed.
James McGinn / Genius
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