9/25/2023 0 Comments Ice quake science definition![]() Over the next two weeks the country watched closely as the 30,000 tiny earthquakes tracked the underground movement of the magma as it cracked a 46 km long path through the earth’s crust. Scientists were flown up onto the glacier in helicopters, before speeding around on snow scooters to get the essential instruments out as quickly as possible.īárðarbunga volcano beneath the Vatnajökull ice sheet. ![]() Teams rushed out to deploy more seismic instruments to record the earthquakes and determine where they were happening more accurately. Scientists first knew something interesting was happening at Bárðarbunga in August of 2014 when hundreds of tiny earthquakes were detected within the volcano deep below the ice. It sits underneath the massive Vatnajökull glacier, covered by around 800 m of thick ice. īárðarbunga volcano is right in the middle of Iceland in the remote and uninhabited highlands. The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 created a large ash plume that blew across western Europe. It was the largest eruption in Iceland in over 200 years, and was 10 times bigger than than the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, but it didn't ground a single flight. But a couple of years later in 2014 there was another eruption in Iceland, at a volcano called Bárðarbunga. The main reason why this eruption was so ash heavy was due to the interaction of the hot magma erupting under the cold overlying ice. This volcano erupted in 2010 and was all over the news because it produced so much ash that it grounded 100,000 flights and closed European air space. ![]() When you think of Icelandic volcanoes, the one you will probably remember is the eruption of the volcano with the long, hard to pronounce name that had news readers getting their tongues in a twist: Eyjafjallajökull, which sits under a glacier in southern Iceland. The main volcanic rift zones in Iceland, with Bárðarbunga volcano beneath the Vatnajökull ice sheet. Magma (molten rock) can erupt from the central volcano itself, or travel through the cracks of the fissure swarm to create long lines of eruptions far from the volcano itself. Iceland has over 30 active volcanic systems, which have a central volcano in the middle with long cracks spreading outwards to the north and south (fissure swarms). But at Iceland we see the process on land because a hot upwelling from deep within the Earth also sits beneath Iceland, pushing it upwards out of the sea and making the area even more volcanically active. This rifting process is happening all the way down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean beneath the sea. As the tectonic plates split apart magma (molten rock) wells up from below forming volcanoes, which creates new land in between. These two blocks are moving apart at around 2 cm per year (approximately the rate that your finger nails grow) and are slowly widening the Atlantic Ocean increasing the distance from Europe to North America. Iceland sits on crack in the surface of the Earth where two tectonic plates (large blocks that make up the outer most layer of the Earth) are ripping apart from each other. Learn about the 2014 Bárðarbunga eruption and the massive Holuhraun lava field that it created.ĭiscover interesting facts that you might not know about earthquakes and volcanoes. ![]() On this page you can learn more about the science behind them: Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are incredible and dramatic natural events. ![]()
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