So much to write about tonight - intense quaking in the caldera, changes in the magma flow in the dike, questions to a vulcanologist, and on and on. I debated with myself as to what to lead with. But it kept coming back to one thing.
The Mist.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes a place just gets misty days; I've seen it before several times where mist or dust interferes with one's views of the mountains. But recently it's been different, and today it was really pronounced. And the Met Office confirmed: this was not just mist, this was the Mist, and could cause significant problems for people.
And I was driving through it.
But when the Mist descends, so does the fog of uncertainty. And at this point, here in the west at least, I'm not sure which is worse.
Let's start tonight's Eldfjallavakt.
As I mentioned yesterday, today my plan was to drive out with a couple of friends to Stykkishólmur, over two hours away, to attend a lecture on Bárðarbunga by Haraldur Sigurðsson, a retired vulcanologist. But but come the morning, there was a blue mist visible everywhere in the distance. The radio quickly confirmed that it was from Holuhraun.
(Credit: Ragnar Axelsson)
I immediately checked the pollution monitors for Reykjavík with my phone. Low levels - whew. So is it not here? Or is it just in the air? What will happen when we go up in elevation? I check a couple other places in the country to see how they're doing, since supposedly the whole country is experiencing this. For example, here's the numbers for Akureyri:
Huh? Negative SO2 levels? So if I had SO2 in my lungs, and I breathe in, it'll suck the SO2 right out? Obviously, I was immediately thinking, "Can I actually trust these readings?" After all, the met office has been fiddling with their system an awful lot recently, moving meters around, changing their display interfaces, etc. I decide that I probably should trust it - but there's that lingering doubt.
So we continue our drive:
Obviously I want to check the local meters... but there aren't any, for the rest of the trip, nor at the destination. I have no clue whether we're about to drive undo a section with thousands of µg/m³. And neither does anyone else. Nobody says it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the others were monitoring their senses as to how they were feeling, as I was. It makes you paranoid.
Every time volcano news came on the radio, the converstaion stopped and the volume was turned up.
We got to Stykkishólmur early and walked around town a bit. The mist cleared right before town, which was nice - the weather actually became rather pleasant.
The site for the lecture was a volcano museum founded by Haraldur after he retired
We got ourselves some seats and then browsed around the exhibits. People continued accumulating before Haraldur took the stage - lots of people in attendence, and most seemed very well informed:
He gave his presentation - most of which I already knew, but a lot which was presented in interesting manners. He pointed out how Bárðarbunga is the only modern volcano on earth to have lava flows reach both the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, and he talked about the various VEI-6 (greater than 10 cubic kilometers of material) eruptions in the past 10,000 years. Even though I've seen them before, and even though there have been bigger eruptions on Earth in the past (not in the past 10,000 years, though) it's still pretty crazy to see a map of a 200-kilometer-long lava flow (the distance from DC to Philadelphia). He then went into more detail about some of the eruptions around and after the settlement period, such as the 871 Landnáms eruption, where Bárðarbunga sent a dike 100 kilometers to Torfajökull, setting off a super-ashy eruption:
Here's the location of the airplane Geysir in Bárðarbunga's caldera:
This map shows how little the original Holuhraun flow was versus the current one and consequently why we need a new name for this flow (-cough- Þorbjargarhraun -cough-). Keeping the old name would be akin to replacing a bush with a redwood and calling the redwood "bush #2".
The lecture concluded and I asked him questions. Here's a basic summary:
Why is the infrared picture so much cooler than his reported heat measurements? He said that you're measuring something that's cooling on its surface, there's gas and stuff between it and the camera, etc - basically, its a poor way to measure lava temperature.
Why have at least these early gas forecasts been so bad? Him: because weather forecasts are so bad. Me: Even for one day out? Him: Yes.
Are the drops in the caldera causing the quakes, rather than the other way around? Him: Yes. Me: Why are some quakes not associated with drops? Him: they could be, for example, deep drops that don't extend all the way to the surface.
What is going on with the Jökulsár á Fjöllum near Vaðalda? He had no clue.
What is this "unusual GPS motion" that the scientific committee has been reporting? He had never heard anything about unusual motion. He asked "what's usual?"
I asked him about his claim that this was a "shallow" magma chamber, when it has to be at least 9 km deep. His response was basically that shallow is a relative term, and while that's deep by Icelandic standards, it's not unheard of. He didn't address the comparative magnesium levels I asked him about.
Someone else asked him about the scientific committee's analysis of a deep source magma. He hadn't read about it.
Another person asked him about the independent analysis that suggested that the main magma chamber was underlain by a second magma chamber. He seemed to have no clue what she was talking about.
In short... it was an interesting lecture, and he has a solid background, no question about that. But it seems he's been "going on his own" on this one and not reading that much of what other people are doing on this.
The meeting concluded and we browsed around the museum, checking the rock collection and the various volcano-related art from around the world, made some time for a little mushroom picking in a nearby forest, but avoided excess heavy activity.
We then headed out, reentered the mist and drove back to Reykjavík, passing a roundup on the way. The mist slowly cleared over the course of the evening.
What do I make of the Mist? Well, for one, while it can be pretty in some respects, overall it's just gloomy. It doesn't just make you want to abandon activities because of health risk, but also because the world looks dismal. It gives the environment a look like it wants you to leave so it can flow in peace through the abandoned ghost towns. Also, I understand now what a resident of Reyðarfjörður wrote. He wrote that you couldn't see the bottoms of mountains but you could still see the tops like they were floating, which I assumed the reporter just messed up in his reporting. Until I saw it and understood:
(It was even more pronounced than that in person, but it didn't really show up well in the picture.)
You not only wonder whether you can trust the weather forecasts. Or whether you can trust the meters. You also question whether you can trust your own senses. Are my eyes getting a bit sore because of the Mist or because I didn't sleep enough? Does my throat feel dry and dusty because of the Mist, or because I'm not drinking enough water? Is my head getting a bit uncomfortable because of the Mist or because we're changing altitude? Am I unexpectedly out of breath because I exerted myself more than usual, or is it the Mist effecting my lung function? You can't help but question everything that happens, even if you don't want to. Because you know that things are probably fine, but you realy don't want to enter a situation when they're not, and your mind wants to pre-warn you. I'd give myself odds - symptom A only 20% likely a Mist symptom here, symptom B is 30% likely, symptom C is 10% likely, etc. I didn't want to, it just happened automatically, and it's kind of maddening. It makes you want to just avoid activity so you don't even have to think about it. I mean, how comfortable would you be about driving hours away from your home through areas long from shelter if there's a chance you could run into a place where the air is like breathing straight from the tailpipe of a piece of construction equipment?
Even when it's not a problem, it's still a problem.
Anyway, enough with the mist. I have a message for Bárðarbunga: Calm The Heck Down This Evening!
Geez, do you have Restless Caldera Syndrome or something?
23:00:10: 3,4
22:59:08: 3,1
22:46:28: 3,9
21:01:02: 3,5
20:12:26: 3,6
20:03:17: 3,6
17:11:41: 5,0
17:05:47: 4,4
17:04:48: 4,0
17:02:02: 3,6
17:00:56: 3,4
16:01:05: 3,4
15:00:51: 3,4
14:38:16: 3,5
09:12:13: 3,3
08:04:12: 3,3
01:10:11: 5,1
Take a freaking break from trying to rip yourself apart! But just to head off any of those worrying about an imminent eruption, here's the tremor graph:
These are just quakes, they're not magma bursting to the surface. But yeah, we absolutely don't want to see them. Or the subsidence:
So, remember that aforementioned unusual GPS movement that the scientific committee keeps mentioning? Loksins, they've finally given a more specific statement, that it's indicative that magma influx into the dike is increasing. Flow out on Holuhraun is remaining constant.
Thanks to a recent picture from the air today, I've been able to reconstruct what's going on on the dike today (thank you, Axel!).
Key:
1. Skínandi
2. Nearby island (currently split down the middle)
3. Sandbar
4. Side stream, now a detour channel for the river
5. High southern river bank
6. Lava flows
7. Newly forming lake.
It's been widely said thusfar that "the lava flow just advances and the river moves to the side". Well, clearly that's no longer the case. The river is jammed up against a tall riverbank near Vaðalda. To get past the lava - whether over or along the bank it's not clear - it has to increase in height. To increase in height it has to build up a lake. It is beginning to do that. The body of water visible appears to be a couple kilometers long and perhaps as much as half a kilometer wide. The more height it needs to reach over either the lava or the bank, the exponentially larger the lake has to become.
At least Skínandi is safe until the flow advances another 2,5 kilometers - and the flow was, at last report, moving very slowly on this end.
Speaking of dams, today, two researchers who have conducted research on the river Þjórsá and its tributaries - aka where the dams are - raised serious questions about how poorly flood control has been thought through on the system. Their main concern is about flooding of large amounts of plant life, but the scale of the flood that they're dealing with - which the power plant operators didn't even consider - is a mere 6000 cubic meters per second. If 6000 m³/s is the sort of level of flooding that they weren't even considering until 2008, let's just say that this does not raise my confidence in their ability to deal with the consequences should the situation in Bárðarbunga turn sharply negative.
In unrelated news... poor Gunnuhver. The little roiling mudpot is clearly jealous of all the attention Bárðarbunga is getting, and so decided to suddenly grow to many times its size, take out its new viewing platform, and turn into a mud geyser.
(Credit: mbl.is)
Primadonna. :Þ
Roundups are going well in the east, despite the conditions.
Lastly... as every day this week...
Daily Kos Styrktarátak Slysavarnarfélagsins Landsbjargar - our fundraiser for ICESAR, Icelandic Search and Rescue - has blown away all of my expectations. For those of you who didn't see the update yesterday afternoon, as of 11:30 AM (Iceland time), 129 individuals had given a total of $5088. It's just been astounding.
For those of you who haven't donated yet - or can donate more - you can do so here. If you can, tack on $0.01 to the price or leave a message indicating that your donation is part of this fund drive. :)
As a reminder, I'm offering up two custom prizes of Icelandic goodies of your choice: one will be raffled off at random, weighted by how much everyone has donated, while one will go to the single individual with the highest total. Just to let you know, the number to beat for that stands at present at $300. But even someone who donates only $5 is still in the run for the raffle, and someone who donates $10 doubly so. :) And of course... the last thing I want to say?
A million thanks to you all. :)
Picture and video time:
(Credit: MBL / RAX)
(Credit: MBL / RAX)
(Credit: MBL / RAX)
(Credit: MBL / RAX)
(Credit: Julia Boira)
(Credit: Julia Boira)
(Credit: Julia Boira)
(Credit: Julia Boira)
(Credit: Emil Þór Sigurðsson)
(Credit: Emil Þór Sigurðsson)
(Credit: Emil Þór Sigurðsson)
(Credit: Emil Þór Sigurðsson)
(Credit: Emil Þór Sigurðsson)
(Credit: Emil Þór Sigurðsson)
(Credit: Gro B.M.)
(Credit: Ómar Ragnarsson)
Update, midnight: I hate to say it, but I think I'm too sick to write tonight... as I can hardly even read tonight. Sorry everyone :(