I'm never surprised by the ability of random events to completely derail what I planned to write about. I had a full article written up about all of the major news from the current eruption that accumulated while I was at Airwaves. But then right when it was about 80% done, what comes on the radio but news about this:
Whoa. What. The. Heck. The caldera is suddenly going sharply... up?
Join me below the fold for this, and then the news that I had been writing about!
The caldera - an area the size of Manhattan - just moved up 1,5 meters? In six hours? And not a "hop up and down"? What could this mean?
Haraldur Sigurðsson noticed this, wrote about it, and then the media noticed what he wrote. As one would expect, a sudden and major change in behavior like this could be a major sign that a caldera eruption is about to begin. I mean, geez, that's quite the sign!
.... or not.
It turns out that the GPS station was getting snowed under, so they had to raise its antenna by.. wait for it... 1.5 meters. ;) So on with your regularly scheduled subsidence for an unknown length of time with an unknown outcome!
Now, to what I had planned to be writing about ;)
Airwaves went off about as well as it could have given the situation.
I went to somewhere in the ballpark of 80 concerts all around town. Apart from a little nighttime spike on the first evening, pollution stayed in acceptable levels for every day except Sunday, when many people were already leaving, and even then it wasn't too high. I had some of my residual symptoms at times that never really went away after the earlier exposures (I do plan to go to a doctor if they don't go away after the eruption stops), but overall I dealt just fine and partied like crazy as is usual for Airwaves. The winds played in favor of the fest.
Elsewhere in the country, however, the news has kept pouring in. And it's long past time for an update.
The lava keeps flowing.
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
The field now spreads over 70 square kilometers and is not slowing down, neither in outflow nor in caldera subsidence (measured from a volumetric standpoint at least). The overall subsidence in the caldera is 1,1 to 1,2 cubic kilometers and up to 44 meters deep. The geothermal ice cauldrons on the rim had sunk at last report 5 to 8 meters in depth in 11 days.
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
Really, though, the story here continues to be the pollution.
(Credit: Jarðvísindastofnun)
The snow falling near the eruption site may be beautiful, but it's not ordinary. pH readings at the site show that the snow is in places as acidic as cola, with a pH as low as 3,2. This is particularly concerning, as unlike with acid rain, acid snow accumulates; the acid will then quickly move into riparian ecosystems all at once in a short period of time during the spring thaw. Acidity of the snow further away from the eruption site has not been studied.
"Wait, you measured how much pollution in Húsavík?" Early reports claimed that Húsavík hit 8.400 µg/m³. But relax, everyone! They misread the meter, it "only" got up to 4.800. Whew, right? Children in elementary school turned out to be the "early" warning system for some, as a principal called in to check what the pollution levels were after the kids started complaining of headaches.
Place after place keeps hitting the thousands - Vík, Vestmannaeyjar, and on and on. The solution is always the same... stay inside, close windows, shut off air circulation, etc. The civil protective services says that pollution levels are only 10% indoors what they are outdoors (but warns against the people who've foolishly been buying simple dust masks to try to protect themselves).
(Credit: Morten S. Riishuus)
Concerning the civil protective services, ScienceWeb, from the University of Iceland, questions at least one aspect of their gas safety advice (turning the heat up), saying that the pressure would equalize in seconds. They don't address however how long it would take for a building to actually heat up, treating the problem as if the building heats instantly; it actually can take quite a while. That said, I do too question how much effect it would have.
But, regardless, the civil proctective service's advice and the network of (sometimes offline) net-connected meters and (sometimes erroneous) hand meters is all we've got.
In another example of meters not telling the whole story, two police officers guarding the eruption site began asphyxiating despite "low" SO2 levels of 7.000 µg/m³ (that would be very high by the standards of in-town, but at the eruption site levels have reached into the hundreds of milligrams per cubic meter). They managed to get away from the site without passing out and recovered after a few hours. The cause? There are many gases that come up from the eruption which consume the oxygen in the air; a mere gas mask isn't always enough, as a gas mask doesn't provide supplimental oxygen.
This event was probably the last straw that led to the change in rules to access at the eruption site. Now everyone - not just the media, but even scientists - must sign a waiver that they will pay the costs of their rescue and that they must have have taken out additional insurance which will cover them in the event of health problems arising from their time at the site.
The president of the Asthma and Allergy Association gave an interview about the eruption. "This is basically just horrible, not least because you don't know how long it's going to go on and how long people are going to have to struggle with this." She noted several things I noted myself, including how people don't go to the doctor when they know the cause, they just try to deal with it, and how frustrating it can be when you don't know whether a symptom is random or because of the pollution - but how sometimes it's obvious. She mentions going out on a jog the previous sunday and quickly began to have respiratory trouble and felt sick.
(Credit: RÚV)
Probably one of the most creepy signs, something that The Grapevine thinks would make for a good plot element in a M. Night Shyamalan movie, farmers all around Höfn (where the worst pollution near populated areas has been measured) have been finding huge numbers of dead field mice. They're out in the open, as if they died relatively quickly while out foraging, and most commonly seen in low points where pollution would accumulate. The Nature Office confirms the issue and believes the symptoms they've seen indicate poisoning, either by ingestion or breathing, but that it's too late for them to conduct autopsies to determine more precisely than that.
But let's pause for a second and look at what the pollution is not. And we can thank Republican Lisa Murkowski, head of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, for this one. She claimed that "The emissions that are being put in the air by that volcano are a thousand years' worth of emissions that would come from all of the vehicles, all of the manufacturing in Europe".
This is, of course, nonsense. Volcanic eruptions, this one included, have almost no effect on global CO2 levels:
Volcanoes emit around 0,3 gigatonnes of CO2 per year on average. Humans emit about 35. But since when have pesky things like facts ever mattered to these people? That said, I do have some complaints about a lot of the pages debunking Murkowski, which do the exact same confusion of SO2 and CO2 that Murkowski is guilty of in asserting in general terms that "Bárðarbunga's pollution is trivially insignificant compared to that caused by humans" and such. Her CO2 pollution is insignificant. Her SO2 pollution absolutely is not.
As a quick around-the world side note, Kilauea's flows have claimed their first house of its recent outbreak :( At least it's still largely stopped in Pahoa proper.
(Credit: Staff Sgt. Katie Gray / EPA)
Lastly, some Airwaves pics...
... and a very special volcano video, of something that I'm not sure has ever been filmed before, ever. Many have you have seen video of water spouts before, right? Well, have you ever seen a lava spout?
Morten Riishuus took this incredible video of a strong tornado passing over a lava flow and sucking up lava into its funnel.