The Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) has confirmed that this Sunday morning a new volcanic eruption was recorded in the north of the Icelandic town of Grindavik, in the southwest of the country, on the Reykjanes peninsula. Last December, in this same region, another event of these characteristics had already occurred, which reached equilibrium within a few hours.
Seismic activity accelerated sharply last night and residents of Grindavik were evacuated around 3 a.m. (local time and GMT), according to Icelandic public radio and television. The Civil Protection services had already warned on their social networks a few hours before that, according to the IMO, up to 200 earthquakes had occurred in the area during the night and the volcanic eruption was “imminent” and the ejection of lava, “the most likely”.
The new eruption is smaller than last December – the crack through which the lava comes out is almost a kilometer long and the previous one was about 3.5 kilometers – but the ejected magma seems to have surpassed the containment barriers that were being installed and is located just 450 meters from the first homes in the north of the town. Civil protection services are closely monitoring the situation and remember that most of the town remains empty because many of its occupants have not yet returned after the first evacuation in November. Rescue services are working to prevent magma from destroying machines and vehicles in the town's industrial area, an important fishing area in the southwest of the country.
Iceland lies between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates and is one of the most active volcanic regions on Earth, with 33 volcanoes or volcanic systems listed as active. Over the past two years, there have been three volcanic eruptions on the island: in August 2022, July 2023 and last December.
The last reported eruption, a little less than a month ago, was also expected: intense seismic activity has been recorded since the end of October, with hundreds of earthquakes in the area that already anticipated a large eruption. Finally, it was on December 19 when the lava ejection occurred about three kilometers northeast of the city of Grindavik. The crack in the Earth's surface was about 3.5 kilometers long and, at first, expelled between 100 and 200 cubic meters of lava per second, with columns of smoke a hundred meters high. However, the intensity of the event began to reduce within a few hours and soon entered a phase of equilibrium. “Scientists who flew over the eruption site confirm that no eruptive activity is seen and that the flow of lava from the craters appears to have ceased. “The glow is still visible in the lava field, possibly within closed channels,” explained the IMO on his X account (formerly Twitter) just a couple of days later.
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