week 4 - volcano Eyjafjallajökull

The eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull

Eyjafjallajökull is an Icelandic volcano situated narrowly between two converging tectonic plates – the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate. As these plates converged, they created the mountains and the valleys that make up this beautiful Nordic island.

Eyjafjallajökull, located in southern part of Iceland, is considered to be a moderately active volcano. Volcanoes like Eyjafjallajökull erupt every few centuries. Researchers learned a great deal when it erupted in 2010. The initial eruption was mild at first, but there was a second explosive eruption on April 10^th, which was under the volcano’s glacier icecap. This began a chain reaction that led to massive flooding. Not only were the hazardous effects of the eruption experienced on the ground, but because of its location under the highly traveled trans-Atlantic flight path, the large volume of tephra, or ash, rising up grounded all planes traveling to and from North America and Europe for six days.

An article in Live Science by Choi, postulated that, “The cause of Eyjafjallajökull's explosive eruption seemed to be the meeting of one body of magma, made up mostly of the common volcanic rock basalt, with another type of magma within the volcano, consisting largely of silica-rich trachyandesite.” This conclusion was based on research done over the course of two decades prior to the eruption, and during the actual eruption, by Icelandic researcher Sigmundsson and his colleagues. They found that unlike highly active volcanos where magma chambers within the volcano gradually fill up beforehand and rapidly deflate as pressure is released, the magma chamber that deflated in Eyjafjallajökull during the explosive April eruption did not act in the same way (Choi 2010).

Unlike other active volcanoes, Eyjafjallajökull does not have one main magma chamber. Rather, it has a complex “plumbing system” with magma from different sources made up of different compositions. From his findings, Sigmundsson said, "Our research shows that mapping out magmatic plumbing systems is important to correctly interpreting potential precursors to eruption.” This is an exciting discovery as it may give scientists the ability to more closely predict the eruption of these kinds of volcanoes in the future.

In my journey this week, I enjoyed learning about Eyjafjallajökull and was glad to discover that there is a new interactive learning center in Iceland called Lava Centre where you can learn about the earthquakes and volcanoes that formed Iceland and also “experience” them. I plan to visit the Lava Center in person when I go to Iceland.

Discover the World Education. (2016) Eyjafjallajokull Case Study. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjVfkooyT6k

Sigmundsson, F., Hreinsdóttir, S., Hooper, A. (2010) et al. Intrusion triggering of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull explosive eruption. Nature 468, 426–430 doi:10.1038/nature09558 Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09558

Choi, C. (2010). Why Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull Volcano Erupted. Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/8993-iceland-eyjafjallajokull-volcano-erupted.html