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03-14-2015, 11:23 AM
Drove off the island to Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, for a talk by Professor Emeritus Haraldur Sigurdsson. He used to live on the island and row or kayak to work.
The talk was "Bardarbunga: The largest eruption of the Iceland hotspot in 230 years"
I did not take notes, so have to remember numbers. First, the eruption is over, in the beginning of March. The Iceland hotspot has almost 3x the material moving up as the Hawaii hotspot. It is something like 8 metric tons per second. But, only 1 or 2% becomes melt, and only 1/3 of that erupts. The volume was 2 1/2 cubic km (?) erupted this time. Historic eruptions of other Iceland volcanoes and maybe this one are in the several tens of cubic km.
The amount of sulphur dioxide emitted during the eruption was just a little bit less than that emitted by USA in a year, and was daily comparable to what Europe emits. All Bardabunga lavas for many eruptions are identical geochemically, meaning a humongous well-mixed magma chamber under the ice cap. Seismicity animations showed a dike intrusion without eruption to maybe 100 km NNE of the magma chamber, where it finally erupted Aug 29 2014.
Icelanders were scared of the gases because the eruption of Laki in 1787 (?) had a lot of fluorine: good for your teeth in very small doses, very bad in large doses, the grazing animals lost their teeth and joints and 3/4 died and also 1/4 of humans.
Just thought I would give you something new to worry about.
Chris
The talk was "Bardarbunga: The largest eruption of the Iceland hotspot in 230 years"
I did not take notes, so have to remember numbers. First, the eruption is over, in the beginning of March. The Iceland hotspot has almost 3x the material moving up as the Hawaii hotspot. It is something like 8 metric tons per second. But, only 1 or 2% becomes melt, and only 1/3 of that erupts. The volume was 2 1/2 cubic km (?) erupted this time. Historic eruptions of other Iceland volcanoes and maybe this one are in the several tens of cubic km.
The amount of sulphur dioxide emitted during the eruption was just a little bit less than that emitted by USA in a year, and was daily comparable to what Europe emits. All Bardabunga lavas for many eruptions are identical geochemically, meaning a humongous well-mixed magma chamber under the ice cap. Seismicity animations showed a dike intrusion without eruption to maybe 100 km NNE of the magma chamber, where it finally erupted Aug 29 2014.
Icelanders were scared of the gases because the eruption of Laki in 1787 (?) had a lot of fluorine: good for your teeth in very small doses, very bad in large doses, the grazing animals lost their teeth and joints and 3/4 died and also 1/4 of humans.
Just thought I would give you something new to worry about.
Chris