burn brightly Lava pouring through cracks in Iceland The Reykjanes Peninsula is so voluminous that it can be easily seen from orbiting satellites.
The image above is approximately 3.5 miles in diameter and was created using data acquired by the Landsat 9 satellite on November 24th. If you look carefully at the leftmost extension of the flowing lava, you can see some turquoise dots. This is the Blue Lagoon, Iceland’s iconic geothermal spa that attracts tourists from all over the world.
Blue Lagoon geothermal spa in Iceland. (Credit: Brian Redgard, via Wikimedia Commons)
Lava from an ongoing eruption nearby flows across the spa’s parking lot. The service building was burnt down..
eruption This earthquake is the latest in a series of seven earthquakes that began in December 2023. This earthquake was heralded by a swarm of earthquakes on the night of November 20th. About 5 hours later, Suomi nuclear power plant satellite I got the image of Iceland at night below. The light flowing from the lava flow onto the satellite sensor was so intense that it appeared brighter than Iceland’s capital Reykjavik.
Nighttime images of Iceland captured by the Suomi Nuclear Power Plant satellite on November 20, 2024, show the searing bright light of lava from the current volcanic eruption, brighter than Iceland’s capital Reykjavik. (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory)
Below is another version of the Landsat 9 satellite that shows the landscape around the Reykjanes Peninsula in more detail.
This image taken by the Landsat 9 satellite on November 24, 2024, shows lava erupting from an eruption fissure near the summit of Stora Skogfell in Iceland. The Blue Lagoon can be seen to the north of the town of Grindavik. (Credit: NASA Earth Observatory)
Landsat imagery combines natural-color scenes with infrared signals to reveal the thermal signature of lava. Gases mainly consisting of sulfur dioxide can also be seen erupting from the lava.
Iceland is located along a huge seam in the Earth’s crust that runs roughly midway between the North and South Atlantic Oceans. This seam is known as the Undersea Mountain Range, which is approximately 10,000 feet high. mid-atlantic ridge. And along that line, plate Countries are being pulled apart, including Iceland. Here, the North American plate is moving roughly west to southwest, while the Eurasian plate is pulling eastward.
Crustal movements and huge magma plumes
When these tectonic plates diverge, cracks in the Earth’s crust open, magma gush out and spit out lava on the surface. This phenomenon is not unique to Iceland, but occurs throughout the 10,000-mile-long Mid-Atlantic Ridge. But Iceland is one of the few places where you can actually walk along a ridge and witness a process that typically takes place thousands of feet below sea level. why is that?
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge divides Iceland and separates the North American and Eurasian plates. The current eruption is occurring south of Iceland’s capital Reykjavik. Some of the most active volcanoes are marked with red triangles. (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey)
Along much of the ridge, molten lava flows onto the ocean floor, cools, and pulls away from seams in the Earth’s crust. Because of that movement, the lava doesn’t have time to accumulate enough to rise above sea level.
But Iceland is not just located on a mid-ocean ridge. It also sits directly above a “hot spot,” a huge plume of magma rising from deep within. Between both sources, the eruption of lava was enough to build Iceland above sea level.
Wildflowers bloom at the bottom of an old lava flow in Indjanahefji, a nature reserve on the coast of Klaifalvatn. This beautiful Icelandic lake is located within the Rift Valley, just 9 miles from the current eruption. (Credit: ©Tom Yulsman)
Volcanic activity in Iceland is temporary. During the quiet stage, tectonic movements cause strain to accumulate in the earth’s crust. After a period lasting 600 to 1,200 years, the strain is enough to tear the Earth’s crust apart, allowing lava to flow out in eruptive pulses lasting 200 to 500 years.
“We’re on such a pulse right now,” said David Pyle, a volcanologist at the University of Oxford. told Live Science. “Each eruption releases a little bit of the stored strain, and eventually, when all that strain is released, the eruption stops.”
Conclusion: The situation we are currently seeing on the Reykjanes Peninsula is likely to continue intermittently for centuries.
