What will happen to iceland

Someone was also caught trying to fry eggs and bacon atop the lava, predictably with little success. While volcanologists are taking the opportunity to study this eruption, archaeologists are scrambling to figure out if the lava threatens any significant sites.

Based on historical records, experts believe a burial site thought to date back more than 1, years, perhaps belonging to a notable figure, could be right in the path of the eruption. According to local news reports, archaeologist Oddgeir Isaksen of the Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland sped to the scene in a helicopter shortly after the eruption began, but he was not able to find evidence of the burial site before lava overran the area.

The eruption is probably going to peter out in the coming days or weeks, and the bigger earthquakes keeping people awake may also drop off for a bit. But there are hints that the fireworks are far from over. There could have been a significant amount of tectonic shifting across the peninsula, meaning additional pockets of magma could make their way to the surface.

Based on the geological history of the region and studies of somewhat similar eruptions elsewhere in Iceland, another eruption from a different fissure in Reykjanes Peninsula is a distinct possibility, Ilyinskaya says. But this could transpire in days, weeks, months, or even years. It may involve a similar amount of magma as the current eruption, or it could release significantly more. Historical accounts and layers of ancient volcanic rock suggest that each time this area experiences a significant increase in earthquakes, it culminates in several decades of eruptions, jumping from fissure to fissure all over the peninsula.

The small and relatively safe eruption occurring now therefore provides a stellar opportunity for scientists and emergency managers to prepare for possible bursts of lava to come. All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email. Read This Next Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London. Animals Wild Cities Wild parakeets have taken a liking to London Love them or hate them, there's no denying their growing numbers have added an explosion of color to the city's streets.

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But will they invade your privacy? The prospect of all three being threatened by lava aroused considerable concern. Yet the earthquakes quieted down, and the lava remained underground, as if, like the rest of the world, it were abiding by pandemic lockdown protocols. On March 19th, just after 8 p. She pointed toward the mountains north of the road: behind them, surges of pink, red, and orange light brightened the sky. Scientists later confirmed that, at p. Snorrason and his daughter were two of the first people to witness a volcanic eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula since the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

Information about how far, and how hard, the hike to the crater would be proved elusive and contradictory. The hike might take six hours. Or three. The route was extremely, or only moderately, difficult. In one particularly steep section, there was—or was not—a rope.

It was therefore disconcerting when, on that late-May afternoon, I drove to the end of an access road and entered a brand-new—but empty—parking lot. I parked beside a wooden stake on which someone had hung a lost hat, and spotted in the distance a newly laid path, which cut across a vast field of evil lava, hazed by moss, before angling upward and into the mountains. Scientists kept changing their estimates of the anticipated life span of the eruption—from a few days to hundreds of years.

The last time the Reykjanes Peninsula became active, it remained so for about three centuries. In the nine weeks since the fissure first opened, the site had rapidly and abruptly changed in appearance and behavior. In early May, a fissure known merely as Vent 5 transformed into a spectacular fire geyser, shooting lava as high as a thousand feet into the air.

Since then, everything but Vent 5 had become inactive. And I worried that even that had gone dormant. I cinched my pack and started across the lumpy field toward the trailhead. I knew how fitful the crater was from watching a series of YouTube videos posted by a man named Valur Grettisson. On one blizzarding night in late March, forty hikers lost their way; a search-and-rescue team eventually found them.

As I walked, I suddenly noticed a tall man whose dark, earth-toned clothing had camouflaged him in the landscape. The eruption was still happening, he assured me, in Icelandic-accented English. Unlike the eruption on the offshore island of Heimaey, it threatens to eradicate no town or fill a fishing harbor with land.

Hekla, a still active volcano that, after it erupted in , became known as the Gateway to Hell. Fagradalsfjall had thus far caused no deaths and, temporary traffic jams aside, it had barely even proved an inconvenience.

But I knew that, given the unpredictable nature of volcanic eruptions, it was foolish to bank on good manners. A large swath of the eastern Reykjanes Peninsula, including the eruption site, is owned by an association representing two dozen descendants of a family that acquired the land more than two hundred years ago. Real-estate disputes become complex when new land is created by old land.

This was said to explain the pitiless weather for which the Reykjanes Peninsula is known today. Ancient curse or no, the weather on the path was formidable. Dirt devils juked and attacked me from all sides, even over the long, flat hike to the base of the first incline.

Ski goggles would have been nice. The gusts, some of which seemed to exceed fifty or sixty miles per hour, almost knocked me over repeatedly. Once, I was blown nearly a foot downhill, my boots leaving a pair of skid marks in the dirt. As I approached one exposed curve, I could see that the landscape was bare all the way to the ocean, a couple of miles away—there are no trees in this part of Iceland.

The energy speeding unhindered from the North Atlantic was fearsome. I crouched and braced. I waited for the lull. I scurried around the curve. The sun vanished and the wind grew unrelentingly vicious, the temperature hovering in the forties. As I continued along a dusty ridge that lacked vegetation, the path was now marked by distantly placed sturdy wooden stakes. Finally, the first visual evidence of the eruption came into view.

To my right, a frozen waterfall of black lava paved a steep slope—apparently, this was overspill from a lava field farther uphill. There was now a strong and familiar odor. The air smelled like cataclysm. A pair of matching diggers, parked on the nearby slope, stood as noble monuments to the attempt. The center of the field resembled carbonized oatmeal. The lava near the path reached out with giant panther paws that seemed to demand petting. I encountered a few people here, crouching and cautiously touching the lava.

But there is one geological wonder in Icelandic which is spectacular, and that is the fact the island is being pulled apart by the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.

The theory of tectonic plates is not an old one, just about years old. No, it will not. Only because if it could happen, it probably would have occurred in those millions of years since it was formed.

The tectonic plates move towards east and west, and both the North American and Eurasian systems move to the northwest across the hot spot. Eruptions occur about every years and primarily consist of basaltic lava and tephra.

A few long-lived centres, such as the volcano Hekla, erupt more silicic magmas. Based on the age of the basaltic rocks, Iceland can be divided into three zones. Tertiary flood basalts make up most of the northwest quadrant of the island. This stack of lava flows is at least 3, m thick. Quaternary flood basalts and hyaloclastites are exposed in the central, southwest and east parts of the island.

The Quaternary rocks are cut by the neovolcanic zone, areas of active rifting that contain most of the active volcanoes. The rifts are topographic depression bordered by and containing many faults. Fissure swarms make up most of the neovolcanic zone.