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An Icelandic stratovolcano, one the country?s most active, could erupt at any time
An Icelandic stratovolcano, one the country?s most active, could erupt at any time according to a leading geophysicist.
University of Iceland geophysicist Pall Einarsson said Wednesday that measurement instruments have shown ?unusual? magma movements around the Hekla volcano in recent days. He added, however, that it could not be stated with any certainty that the activity picked up by sensors at the volcano in south Iceland is a signal of an imminent eruptionAccording to R?kis?tvarpi? RUV ? The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service - the GPS movements around Hekla in the past few days are real. Civil disaster authorities and local emergency authorities in the country also were notified Wednesday of the possibility of an eruption.Hekla is situated about 110 kilometres (70 miles) east of the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik. It is located in close proximity to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which erupted in April and May 2010 causing widespread disruption to European airspace and grounding thousands of flights.?No eruption has started in Hekla volcano. But it might start without any warning?, explained Icelandic volcano expert J?n Fr?mann.?Nobody seems to know what is going on with this magma moments for the moment. But they can be tracked with the GPS network to some extent. What is more interesting is that this does not seems to have started until a few days ago. But first signals of this happening did take place in April and May, but at a much lesser smaller scale. What is interesting is that fact that no earthquakes appear during this magma movements, there is also no harmonic tremor when the magma is moving around in the crust close to Hekla volcano. But if there are any earthquakes, noise or whatever coming from Hekla volcano it is going to appear on my geophone that is located about 16 km away from peak of Hekla volcano. The distance is even less from the actual edge of the Hekla volcano system itself.??Normally, there are no changes in the GPS network before an eruption in Hekla volcano. So this is a highly unusual event in Hekla volcano since instrumental monitoring started few decades ago. The question is whether this means a fissure style of eruption is going to take place in Hekla volcano. But that does sometimes happen, as with any volcano in Iceland. For the moment, however, the only thing that we can do is wait and speculate (within reason)?, Mr. Fr?mann added.ABOUT HEKLA
Hekla is a stratovolcano located in the south of Iceland with a height of 1,491 metres (4,892 ft). Hekla is one of Iceland?s most active volcanoes; over 20 eruptions have occurred in and around the volcano since 874. During the Middle Ages, Icelanders called the volcano the ?Gateway to Hell.?According to the Institute of Earth Sciences, Iceland?s most famous volcano is built up on a WSW-ENE trending fissure by repeated fissure eruptions, forming a vaulted ridge about 5 km long and split lengthwise in major eruptions.?Hekla has had a number of large postglacial eruptions, producing vast amounts of tephra which repeatedly covered up to two thirds of the country with light-coloured tephra (i.e. 7000 B.P., 4500 B.P., 2900 B.P., A.D. 1104 and A.D. 1158). During historical time the first eruption (A.D. 1104) was a tremendous explosive eruption which destroyed the ?j?rs?rdalur valley. This eruption produced about 2.5 km3 of rhyodacitic tephra, which was carried towards NNW. The following eruptions in Hekla, producing both lava and tephra, occurred in 1158, 1206, 1222, 1300, 1341, 1389, 1510, 1597, 1636, 1693, 1766, 1845, 1947, 1970, 1980, 1991 and 2000. Some of these eruptions caused great damage, especially the eruptions in 1510, 1693 and 1766.?Hidden Content Aerial view of Mount Hekla in the region of Myrdalsjokull.
One of the largest Holocene eruptions in Iceland was the Hekla 3 (or H3) eruption of 1159 BC which threw about 7.3 km3 of volcanic rock into the atmosphere, placing its Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) at 5. This would have cooled temperatures in the northern parts of the globe for a few years afterwards. Traces of this eruption have been identified in Scottish peat bogs, and in Ireland a study of tree rings dating from this period has shown negligible tree ring growth for a decade. The most recent eruption was relatively short, it started at 18:18 on February 26, 2000 and lasted until March 8.
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Re: An Icelandic stratovolcano, one the country?s most active, could erupt at any tim
Interesting, id love to fill the hole with concrete and see what happens Hidden Content
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