Iceland issues red alert after new eruption near volcano

Iceland on Sunday raised its aviation alert over its largest volcano to the highest level of red after a new eruption nearby.

The alert entails a ban on all flights below 6,000 feet (1.8 kilometers) within a radius of 10 nautical miles (18.5 kilometer) of Bardarbunga.

"All airports are open. The area has no effect on any airports," the Civil Protection Office said in a statement.

Sunday was the third time in a week that Iceland issued a red alert for aviation due to seismic activity near Bardarbunga.

The latest eruption happened roughly in the same area of another eruption on Friday, the authorities said. Bardarbunga, in the southeast of the country, is Iceland's second-highest peak.

A major explosion at Bardarbunga, located under Europe's largest glacier, could signal a replay of the global travel chaos triggered when another Icelandic peak blew four years ago, unleashing a massive ash cloud across Europe.
Source: AFP - globaltimes.cn
31/8/14 (1/9/14)
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Related:

• Strong quakes shake Icelandic volcano 

• Iceland issues aviation alert on volcano activity (M 4.7 - ICELAND - 2014-08-23 18:33:06 UTC.....local time: 18:33)

• Iceland lowers aviation alert from Bardarbunga volcano...

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• M 5.0 - ICELAND - 2014-08-31 12:01:47 UTC

Magnitude    mb 5.0
Region    ICELAND
Date time    2014-08-31 12:01:47.6 UTC
Location    64.71 N ; 17.44 W
Depth    2 km
Distances

    224 km E of Reykjavík, Iceland / pop: 113,906 / local time: 12:01:47.6 2014-08-31
113 km S of Akureyri / pop: 16,563 / local time: 12:01:00.0 2014-08-31 

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• M 4.6 - ICELAND - 2014-08-31 16:12:36 UTC

Magnitude    Mw 4.6
Region    ICELAND
Date time    2014-08-31 16:12:36.5 UTC
Location    64.78 N ; 17.27 W
Depth 

   15 km
Distances    234 km E of Reykjavík, Iceland / pop: 113,906 / local time: 16:12:36.5 2014-08-31
108 km S of Akureyri / pop: 16,563 / local time: 16:12:00.0 2014-08-31 

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Strong quakes shake Icelandic volcano

Two strong earthquakes on Sunday shook Iceland's largest volcano, which is on orange alert lowered from red one for one day amid fears of an imminent eruption, the Icelandic Met Office said.

A large explosion at the Bardarbunga volcano could signal a replay of the global travel chaos caused by the eruption of another Icelandic peak four years ago, which created a massive ash cloud across Europe.

The earthquakes were listed on the Met Office's website with intensities of 5.3 and 5.1 on the Richter scale, which makes them the strongest recorded in the region since the current seismic cycle began last week.

On Saturday, Iceland raised its alert over the Bardarbunga volcano to the highest level and closed airspace in the area, but all of Iceland's airports remained open.

Met Office official Gunnar Gudmundsson told Icelandic public broadcaster RUV that it was difficult to say whether the earthquakes indicated an increased risk of an eruption.

Police said some 300 people had been evacuated in a popular tourist area located north of the Bardarbunga volcano, which lies in southeast Iceland.

"This is quite an extensive evacuation, but it is only in the canyons themselves, not in the inhabited area," Husavi chief of police Svavar Palsson told local media.

"Most of the people were foreign tourists."

The authorities said they had decided not to evacuate residents of nearby areas, but encouraged them to be alert and have their mobile phones switched on at all times.

Police said that the ice layer in the area was between 150 and 400 meters thick.

• Local authorities fear floods from melting ice could cause serious damage to the country's infrastructure.

Seismologists had recorded an earthquake of 4.5 on the Richter scale on Monday, when Iceland decided to raise its aviation alert to orange, the second-highest level of five.

The eruption of Eyjafjoell, a smaller volcano, in April 2010 caused travel mayhem, stranding more than 8 million people in the widest airspace shutdown since World War II.

"There's nothing we can do if we get another big eruption like that of Eyjafjoell except to interrupt air traffic in the dangerous areas," Icelandic Civil Aviation Administration spokesman Fridthor Eydal was quoted as saying earlier this week.

"It's really the only thing we can do," he said.

Iceland's most active sub-glacial volcano Grimsvotn erupted in 2011, forcing the country to temporarily shut its airspace and sparking fears of a repeat of the Eyjafjoell flight chaos.

Iceland is home to more than 100 volcanic mountains, some of which are among the most active in the world.
Sources: AFP - globaltimes.cn
24/8/14
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Related:

• Iceland issues aviation alert on volcano activity (M 4.7 - ICELAND - 2014-08-23 18:33:06 UTC.....local time: 18:33)

• Iceland lowers aviation alert from Bardarbunga volcano...

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Iceland issues aviation alert on volcano activity (M 4.7 - ICELAND - 2014-08-23 18:33:06 UTC.....local time: 18:33)

Iceland's Meteorological Office says a subglacial eruption is underway at the Bardarbunga volcano, which has been rattled by thousands of earthquakes over the past week.

Vulcanologist Melissa Pfeffer said seismic data indicates that lava from the volcano is melting ice beneath the Vatnajokull glacier. She said it was not clear when, or if, the eruption would melt the ice and send steam and ash into the air.

Minutes earlier, Iceland raised its aviation alert for the volcano to the highest level of red on Saturday, indicating an eruption that could cause “significant emission of ash into the atmosphere.” Red is the highest alert warning on a five-point scale.


Scientists had planned to fly over the glacier later Saturday to look for changes on the surface but it was not clear if that would still take place.

Authorities had evacuated several hundred people earlier this week from the highlands north of the Vatnajokull glacier as a precaution. The area is uninhabited but popular with hikers.

Iceland sits on a volcanic hot spot in the Atlantic's mid-oceanic ridge and eruptions have occurred frequently, triggered when the Earth's plates move and when magma from deep underground pushes its way to the surface.

A 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokul volcano produced an ash cloud that caused a week of international aviation chaos, with more than 100,000 flights cancelled. Aviation regulators since have reformed policies about flying through ash, so a new eruption would be unlikely to cause that much disruption.

Pfeffer said the amount of ash produced would depend on the thickness of the ice.

“The thicker the ice, the more water there is, the more explosive it will be and the more ash-rich the eruption will be,” she said.
(AP)
http://www.france24.com/en/20140823-iceland-issues-aviation-alert-volcano-errupts-bardarbunga/
24/8/14
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Related:

• Iceland orders evacuation due to possible volcano eruption

• Threat to flights as Iceland's biggest volcano rumbles

• Islande: alerte rouge au-dessus du volcan BardarBunga...

• Le Bardarbunga en éruption: l’Islande ferme son espace aérien....

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• M 4.7 - ICELAND - 2014-08-23 18:33:06 UTC.....local time: 18:33

Magnitude    mb 4.7
Region    ICELAND
Date time    2014-08-23 18:33:06.2 UTC
Location    64.70 N ; 17.48 W
Depth    2 km
Distances    222 km E of Reykjavík, Iceland / pop: 113,906 / local time: 18:33:06.2 2014-08-23
113 km S of Akureyri / pop: 16,563 / local time: 18:33:00.0 2014-08-23 
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Iceland orders evacuation due to possible volcano eruption

The National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police (NCIP) announced on Tuesday that the authorities were evacuating the north of Vatnajokull to prepare against a possible eruption at Bardarbunga volcano in southeast Iceland.

The NCIP said in a statement that it has raised the Civil Protection level to Alert Phase as all roads leading into the area were closed, and the authorities in Husavik and Seydisfjordur were evacuating the area north of Vatnajokull.
A surveillance plane of the Icelandic Coast Guard has been ordered to monitor the volcano's situation.

This decision was a safety measure, said the statement, adding the seismic activity in Bardarbunga might lead to a volcanic eruption.

Bardarbunga volcano, located under the 800-meter-thick Vatnajokull glacier, is 225 km northeast from Reykjavik, capital of Iceland. Bardarbunga is Iceland's second highest mountain at 2,000 meters above sea level.

Since the onset of the earthquake swarm at Bardarbunga on Saturday morning, about 2,600 earthquakes have been detected by the earthquake monitoring network of the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO).

IMO has raised the danger level from yellow to orange, which indicates the volcano showed heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption.
If the volcano erupts, a major flood fed by melting ice from the glacier could be expected to the north, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service reported.

There have been 48 eruptions in Iceland in last 100 years. The latest huge eruption happened in 2010, when the ash emission from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano forced an air travel disruption in Europe.
By AgenciesX Sources: Xinhua  -globaltimes.cn
20/8/14
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Related:

• Threat to flights as Iceland's biggest volcano rumbles

Threat to flights as Iceland's biggest volcano rumbles

REYKJAVIK: Iceland has warned that its largest volcano is in danger of erupting, four years after millions of air travellers were grounded by a huge ash cloud from another peak.
Scientists believe the ash from an eruption at Bardarbunga could disrupt transatlantic and northern European air traffic, with floods of melting ice likely to cause serious damage to the country's infrastructure.
The Icelandic Meteorological Office raised its aviation alert to the second-highest level on Monday after four days of increasing seismic activity, signalling a heightened risk of eruption.

The eruption of Iceland's smaller Eyjafjoell volcano in April 2010 caused global travel chaos, stranding more than eight million travellers as volcanic ash spread across Europe.
The alert was raised to "orange" after seismologists recorded an earthquake of 4.5 on the Richter scale early on Monday, the strongest in the region since 1996. Roads in a sparsely populated area north of Bardarbunga were closed on Tuesday, as the Meteorological Office said it had recorded some 2,600 tremors over the past four days.
Bardarbunga, Iceland's second-highest peak, rises to more than 2,000 metres, caps the country's largest volcanic system. It sits under the vast Vatnajokull glacier, the country's largest, in the southeast of the island, one of the most active seismic areas on the planet.
Bryndis Brandsdottir, a geophysicist at the University of Iceland, told public broadcaster Ruv on Tuesday that the latest readings indicated that magma was not approaching the surface, but rather remaining "three to seven kilometres below".
"We meet twice a day, but the earthquake activity still comes in waves. There do not seem to be any changes, but it is still very powerful," Vidir Reynisson, department manager at Iceland's Civil Protection Department, told broadcaster 365.
In 2010, the Eyjafjoell volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier, further to the south, shot a massive plume of volcanic debris up to nine kilometres into the sky, blowing ash across to mainland Europe. The ash cloud caused the planet's biggest airspace shutdown since World War II, with fears it could damage aircraft engines.
In 2011, Iceland's most active sub-glacial volcano Grimsvotn erupted, forcing Iceland to temporarily shut its airspace amid fears of a repeat of the Eyjafjoell flight chaos.

- AFP/de

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/threat-to-flights-as/1320792.html

19/8/14

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