Quiet for 290 years, Iceland’s largest volcano now stirring

Alert code raised to yellow.

The ice-covered Öræfajökull volcano, Iceland’s largest volcano, has lain dormant since 1727.

However, geothermal activity has increased so much since a major earthquake on October 3 that it has  has melted enough ice to form lakes around the volcano. The area also reeks of sulfur, another indication of increasing activity.

“Even in the last few days, there have been tremors, albeit smaller ones. Something is going on there which has not happened before, and therefore the observations about the volcano are increasing,” said seismologist Reynir Bödvarsson of Uppsala University.

“There may be an explosive outbreak of ash, similar to what happened in Eyjafjallajokull, which could affect air traffic,” warned Bödvarsson, adding that such an outbreak could last a lot longer than the Eyjafjallajokull eruption.

An explosive eruption at Öræfajökull in 1362 is considered to have been the second most deadly eruption in Icelandic history.

The 1362 eruption was so big that its ash has been found in Greenland and Western Europe.



Although authorities say there is no sign of imminent eruption (they think a swarm of earthquakes would precede an eruption), Iceland’s Department of Civil Protection has published an evacuation plan just in case.


Thanks to Stephen Bird, Alessandro Decet and Gordon Broussard for these links

5 thoughts on “Quiet for 290 years, Iceland’s largest volcano now stirring

  1. http://oro.open.ac.uk/12911/
    copyright 2008 Elsevier B.V.

  2. 1362 on the decent into the deep multi cycle Spoorer GSM, a period of high angular momentum and high gravitational effects on the Earth’s crust.
    1727; during the equally deep multi cycle Maunder GSM, on the rise from the depths of the GSM another period of high angular momentum and high gravitational effects on the Earth’s crust.
    More evidence in my lay view on the relationship between GSMs and eruptions on the Mid Atlantic ridge, and volcanic eruptions in general.

    • Hi Ron,
      Several of the Icelandic eruptions during GSMs have done exactly that, with the Laki eruption one of the largest CO2 and SO2 injections into the atmosphere.
      The latter SO2 got trapped into a High pressure system which then moved over Western Europe during the harvest season causing many manual corn cutters to lose their lives due to Sulfuric damage to their lungs. Harvest in the 1700s was a manual affair, no SUV around then or diesel powered combine harvesters.

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