Iceland's Eruption Reaches Three Weeks, Only One Vent Active: Geologist Provides Analysis 

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I love it when bright people who understand a subject are able to explain complex things using easy to understand vocabulary and grammar.

You are a treasure. Me and my family were watching a film the other night and I suddenly made them laugh when I said, "you see that rock shes holding, its volcanic, and those little holes are where bubbles of gas were! Everyone turned and looked and laughed, it started a great conversation about how i knew and about your brilliant teaching we had a great evening better than what we had been watching🎉😅

Once again you are a diamond for doing these short updates when you are so busy, I’m sure I’m not alone in being very grateful.... thanks Shawn x

Shawn Willsey, Wow, this made my day brighter! Thank you!

The new map with the arrows denoting which direction the land is moving is AWESOME! Arguably the best of all the maps, IMO. Thanks, Shawn, for taking time out of your busy schedule to put this together. It's greatly appreciated. 😊

Thanks for the update on Iceland volcanic eruption. It was great to see the maps of the horizontal displacements of the GPS stations. That shows the extreme amount of stretching that Grindavik has had and why there is so much damage to the roads, homes, pipelines and wiring there. I hope they are monitoring the gases in the Blue Lagoon.

Hi from Serbia, my learning curve is great thanks to Mr. Professor.

Hi Shawn, I know this is a busy time for you as mentioned in your video. Thank you for your time this evening.

Thanks for the update, Shawn

Another enthusiastic Minnesotan here! Those longer term GPS visuals are really eye-opening. Stupendous power shown in graphic form. *Great update, Shawn!* (Cool colors in your tee shirt, though I can’t read it.) 🔥🔥🔥

Yor dedication and genuine desire to share both your time and your vast knowledge is humbling. Thankyou.

Thank you for answering questions in layman's terms in an informative, entertaining way without talking down to us normies...you're a gem!

Keep on flowing!

Hey @shawnwillsey again thank you so much for keeping us updated on the ongoing eruption in Iceland even though you have such a busy schedule! Your team is very grateful :) The GPS vector map is indeed pretty cool, many thanks to the viewer who sent this to you!

Hi Shawn✌️Thanks for the update.😘

Thank you very much for these continuing Updates Our Entire family always appreciate it! 🎉❤

Thanks Shawn. Appreciate your taking the time.

Thank you for the update

Thanks for the update 😊

Thanks again shawn. Really appreciate your time on this and contributors. I know it may be too late for grindavik but it looks like the area dodged the proverbial bullet had the previous eruptions not found a way to the surface before this one. The greenhouse would most certainly be gone, probably the power station and grindavik would have caused a pollution nightmare. Absolute amazing work with the barriers and tireless work on into damage limitation and reparation work though. The future, indeed, is uncertain. Thank you for your informative information. very helpful as always.

Thanks!

Great observations, your updates are so interesting and informative. Thanks from Canada.

Thanks Shawn. We appreciate you trying to keep us updated, despite how busy you are.

Professor Shawn, thanks for your amazing work sharing all your knowledge with us lay people, great fan here! Greetings from Bogotá, Colombia

Hi from Catskill Mountains, NY

Thank you so much, Shawn. I'm fascinated by this.I love Geology on the Move, the earth building itself. Very educational.

Hi all from New York

You are an excellent science communicator, Professor Shawn. I really appreciate the information you present. Also many thanks to Amanda Jo. It's not been an easy time for her but she has provided outstanding information.

Thanks, Shawn. The year-long data plot is fabulous and definitely gives a clearer picture of what’s been happening. Have fun in Utah, and don’t worry about us. We’ll be digesting all this new information.

Love these updates. I just spent a lovely day at the Valley of Fire, please consider a video at some point on this beautiful and interesting geographical place!

Thanks for these updates professor. Cheers from Spain.

Thank you Shawn. Amazing how high some of the lava eruptions still are.

Hello from london

Awesome update Shawn All the best from New Zealand. The shaky isles

Thx Prof ✌🏻. Your geo-ed adventure is much appreciated.

That GPS plot map was what I was hoping for since November! 🤗 Fanastic to have that! Many thanks for the insights and the link!

Thank you for the continuing education!

Thank you for taking your time to update us. It’s appreciated.

Thanks for the update!

Great update Professor!! Thank you

Thank you for the update! Love seeing the graphs and getting a really clear description of whats going on! My chat love watching your videos and i always let them know when there's a new video! I did volcano seismology in university and this always feels like the best class! Thank you again

Minneapolis, Minnesota USA

Thank you Di from Cumbria

Thank you, Professor.

Always enjoy your videos, Shawn. Appreciate your efforts to untangle some of the difficult/misinterpreted stuff that flies around the web. Easy to be led in questionable directions without a knowledgeable person willing to step up and sort through the fluff. Thank you for doing that!

Thanks for an interesting update Shawn. I continue to learn about volcanic activity. Sue, Adelaide, Australia.

Thank you, Professor Willsey.

Thank you Professor.

Thanks...great info...no Lagoon for me...driving on freeway in Seattle is dangerous enough. Take Care You and Ian are rock stars

Thanks for the update! And congrats on reaching 100K subs! :D

Thank you Shawn. I did get to tune in earlier. Very informative.

Hi from Cape Town, South Africa

Thanks for your input, Shawn.

I saw the North-northwest wall collapsed about 3 days ago. It didn't all go into crater but probably 50 percent landed on ground northward.

@Shawn thanks for this.

Hi from Birmingham UK

Great update, thanks

Thanks so much for the update. Looking forward to any videos from Twin Falls 😊

Hi from Birmingham Uk

Hi Shawn, thanks so much for all you’re doing…… I certainly appreciate your updates, you definitely answer all of the questions I ever have!…… have a great week and don’t work too hard! (Not a chance!) 😊❤

❤❤❤ thank you, Shawn!

Thankyou again !

Thank you👍

Having been following this closely (sometimes too closely!) since early december this has played out to be truly interesting and suprising. Your updates Shawn have always been a great consolidation of the facts with your valuable insight and thoughts

Thanks from Bozeman, Montana, USA

Wow, it looks like that thing grew really tall and it's still throwing lava pretty high 😮😮

Wow, with the GPS stations site, you can watch Iceland split apart!

Another curious thing is that the surface height is reset by each event to the surface height of the height that triggered the eruption before the last. And a given eruption happens when the height climbs to about 90-120 above the previous trigger. Assuming the March eruption stops, the following eruption will occur at 210-240 and reset to 120mm. Or the plumbing is changing.

great way to start my day.....

You’re absolutely right, what is the new typography? Lava flows down hill. But which way is that NOW?

Good work Shawn.

Nice! Like those 12 month graphs of GPS data..looking forward to delving into them!

Thank you for sharing! Tired now. 😴 Have a good evening!

Thank you

One and one tenth vents Shawn. There's an itty-bitty one in front of the big cone!🙂

Regarding your comment about thermal buoyancy. I'm a Civil Engineer and know that all man-made materials expand when their temperature increases. I'd wonder if the ground between the magma and surface is heating up and thermally expanding and thus the ground elevations continue to rise. Something else to consider is the accumulation of solidified magma around the chamber that is allowing it to hold a larger shape....probably more of a conjecture/theory if this is the case.

Thanks Shawn, you can see that the last vent is slowly dying down and no threat for further lava flows coming from this eruption 🌋

Thx Shawn...crazy volcanic activity.

From Ireland

excellent all round as always. I was hoping that somewhere you could publish a handful of the best photos from your trip to vienna and prague. Everybody knows you went. Or have you already done so? Not necessarily the usual touristy ones but specific to your trip. You are after all famous so I would guess I am not going to be the only one looking. No rush so when things calm down perhaps in late summer? Or even get your family to pick their favourites...

Thanks

While I was taking a break from shooting the 1983 activity at Kilauea's "Vent O" the entire cone appeared to be moving towards me - the wall broke and a massive outpouring came gushing out towards us. I keep expecting a break in the area where the line of fumes are coming out.

I looked this morning April 7th and it looks like the lava is spilling over the top of the cone.

It’s been fascinating these past few days watching this cone, the amount of lava doesn’t seem to be diminishing. Sometimes watching the walls collapse seems to excite people over in the Geology group! I think it’s the GPS maps/charts that mean as much to me especially when you can see a pattern emerging I.e. uplift …..

Hi from Iceland

To expand on option 3: 4-5m/s to the sill, 8 to the eruption = 13 m/s max inflow or 1.12 million cubic metres/day. It should refill the sill in short order and erupt again, depending on whether the eruption stops or not in the meantime - a hole in the dike definitely changes the eruption options a bit. Hard to model via a 3d quake plot when it isn't generating any, but that's where the Y comes from; a series of quakes coming up east of the dike, that then lead into its north section, they originated at the same place deeper quakes tend to cluster - west of innri-sandholl - which is where the sill started in October. Both Krysuvik and Fagra have a similar series of deeper quakes under their eastern flanks which then migrate up and west into their dikes or storage systems, probably representing an east-west trending series of faults paralleling the southern plate boundary, along which these volcanoes can propagate. It'll end when the source of magma is cut off, goodness knows when that will be.

Watching the eruption today I would hardly describe it as chugging away. Substantial increase in lava flows since yesterday.

I've noticed it seems more active at night. Is it because it's dark time and easier to see?

A question if oyu know the answer. In the map of the inflation ( with the colors) I noticed to the right of Grindavik along the highway there's an awful lot of red/orbage colors. I don't remember that in any of the other maps but maybe they didn't show that area? doesn't that means there's a lot of inflation there? if so what could that mean? is it just from some geothermal water underground? like whats at the power plants?

This is probably an engineer's guess about something I know little about, but it looks to me that there has been a relatively constant flow of lava from depth. The surface rise shows a fairly steady inflow, possibly since November. The "jags" in the surface level represent the amount of lava that was disposed of by the eruption. The fact that the current eruption surface rise is slower than "normal" is due to the disposed lava is only cutting a portion of the incoming flow. This idea would require the March eruption to be less voluminous than the previous after the initial burst. OR the plumbing is changing and the low level magma is growing. I did have one semester of Geology!

On the interfereogram can you address the red area to the east along the coast please.

Hello busy Professor Willsey, really good update today. It was great to see the GPS data back up to the last year, (thank you to viewer Tim Pointing), but I have a slight disagreement with what you pointed out at about 15:02. I don't think that little blip is the Jan 14th eruption. What do you think?

I like pouring over all those charts and graphs. From all that data you can create models of it all, at least in the mind, and with cool visuals people put together. At this time of the eruption, and seeing the steady uplift makes me think it should continue erupting for maybe months. But just when you think you have it figured out, it does the opposite. Nonetheless, the potential is there for it to go on, if not stop and restart somewhere else.

Everything I have heard is that there is no way for solid or even semi solid basalt to melt again at surface pressure. Afaik it only melts at such temperatures well below ground where pressure is much higher.

If the back wall keeps collapsing it might find a way out in that direction. I think it's a low area in that direction.

Hi Shawn You are the only trustworthy person reporting these news items.

Got to see these from a helicopter on Friday. Amazing

You could be interested in a RU-vid presentation by geologist/ volcanoligist Val Troll about a volcano Rum in Scotland, he posted recently, He shows some possible connections and similarities in appearance of Iceland volcano at Grindawik and structural remains of vukcsno of Rum.

My guess in addition to more magma flowing than being erupted can be partly attributed to the slowdown of eruption from the other cones. Only one seems to be fairly active and the slight rise in inflation could be attributed to the one active crater. It's amazing we're getting to see an active eruption and continued inflation. If you could peel back the mantle, I'm sure the supply to this area is more massive than previously considered? I'm concerned that the risk of the blue lagoon is far higher then the politically motivated officials will admit? When does the financial gain become more significant than personal safety?