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REYKJAVIK: A volcano erupted just 40km from Iceland’s capital Reykjavik on Friday (March 19), a red cloud lighting up the night sky when a no-fly zone was established in the area.
“The volcanic eruption has started at Fagradalsfjall. The flight’s color code is red, but very little turbulence is seen on the seismometers,” the Icelandic Meteorological Office, which monitors seismic activity, wrote on Twitter.
Police and coast guard agents rushed to the scene Friday night, but the public was advised to stay away from the area.
The Krysuvik volcanic system, which does not have a central volcano, is located south of Mount Fagradalsfjall on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland.
“The first notification was received by the Meteorological Office at 2140 GMT (5.40 am Singapore time). The eruption was confirmed through webcams and satellite images,” the institute said on its website.
While Iceland’s Keflavik International Airport and the small fishing port of Grindavik are only a few kilometers away, the area is uninhabited and the eruption was not expected to present any danger.
Volcanic eruptions in the region are known as effusive eruptions, where lava constantly flows out of the ground, as opposed to explosive ones that spew clouds of ash into the sky.
The Krysuvik volcanic system has been dormant for the past 900 years, according to the Met Office, while the last eruption on the Reykjanes Peninsula dates back almost 800 years, to 1240.
But the region has been under increased surveillance for several weeks after a magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck on February 24 near Mount Keilir outside Reykjavik.
Since then, that earthquake has been followed by an unusual number of smaller tremors – more than 50,000, the highest number since digital recordings began in 1991.
Since then, seismic activity has moved several kilometers to the southwest, concentrating around Mount Fagradalsfjall, where magma was detected just 1 km below the Earth’s surface in recent days.
LAND OF FIRE AND ICE
Iceland has 32 volcanic systems currently considered active, the highest number in Europe. The country has had an eruption every five years on average.
The vast island near the Arctic Circle straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a rift in the ocean floor that separates the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.
The displacement of these plates is partly responsible for the intense volcanic activity in Iceland.
The most recent eruption was in Holuhraun, beginning in August 2014 and ending in February 2015, in the Bardarbunga volcanic system in an uninhabited area in the center of the island.
That eruption caused no major disruptions outside the immediate vicinity.
But in 2010, an eruption at the Eyjafjallajokull volcano sent huge clouds of smoke and ash into the atmosphere, disrupting air traffic for more than a week with the cancellation of more than 100,000 flights worldwide and leaving some 10 million passengers. stranded.
