Lava is on the surface, Magma is underground, this is from what I've read, plus I did earn a badge in geology years ago.

Just saying.

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

Lava is on the surface, Magma is underground, this is from what I've read, plus I did earn a badge in geology years ago.

You are right.

They do GPS-based measurements of the land uplift above a known magma chamber near the Blue Lagoon. From this, the scientists can determine the amount of magma that has accumulated. As soon as the chamber is full, magma propagates a few kilometers horizontally to a rift zone to the East. Weak earth quakes start days before the next eruption fissure opens up spreading Lava.

The whole process seems to repeat over and over again. How long? Years? Decades? Centuries? Nobody knows. Bad prospects for the future of the nearby village Grindavík.

The rift zone runs more or less North-east to South-west, passing about 2.5km to the East of the Blue lagoon.
The whole area around the Blue Lagoon, a major geothermal power plant and Grindavik is covered by an array of GPS and other sensors which allow the tracking of height and lateral movements, in addition to highly detailed quake and tremor recording. The whole area "enjoys" a vast number of small quakes, both during the inflation and deflation phases of the magma dome. Combined with the gathering pool of human experience allows the approximate location of a new eruption to be predicted (probably to the nearest 0.5km - good enough to get a wide angle camera to view the site. With all the recent activity they are getting quite good at predicting both the location and the time of a probable eruption, so can pre-emptively evacuate affected structures like Grindavik and the Blue Lagoon (the power plant is now run from a remote location so very few people actually on site).

How long will this activity continue? If past eruption phases in the area are anything to go by then 100-200 years, with all the major structures in the area being buried in that time. I hope the Iceland government has plans in hand for a new harbour and power plant.
What of the airport and Reykjavik? Well that's a big question, while not at immediate risk the road linking the two could easily be rendered unusable which would be a serious blow as there is only one airport in the country capable of handling large international flights - a new one needs to be built in a "safe" location within "easy" reach of Reykjavik (unless that city is moved somewhere else).

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Magnitude 4.7 earthquake rattles large parts of NSW

A magnitude 4.7 earthquake has rattled New South Wales, cracking windows, causing thousands of power outages and forcing some schools to evacuate.

The quake – initially identified as a magnitude 5.0 before being downgraded twice – hit just before midday near Muswellbrook in the Upper Hunter Valley, 250 kilometres north-west of Sydney.

More than 2,500 people reported feeling the quake to Geoscience Australia from as far away as Coffs Harbour, Sydney and Canberra.

Well I certainly didn't feel it, but there is a theory about it.

According a geophysicist the 4.7 earthquake in Denman could have been triggered by one simple factor.

The 4.7 magnitude earthquake that rocked the town of Denman in NSW could have been caused by coal mining in the area, according to an expert.

The quake, which shook homes and sparked panic, was recorded at 12.02pm on Friday with reports of tremors as far south as Sydney, 171km away.

There were no reports of serious injuries but chimneys collapsed and some residents suffered power outages.

The quake hit directly underneath BHP’s Mt Arthur Coal mine.

A few miners were reported to have suffered minor injuries......

And another one.
NSW Hunter Region hit by another magnitude-4.5 earthquake, a day after similar event

The New South Wales Hunter region has been hit by another earthquake on Saturday, a day after a similar event.

The magnitude-4.5 quake hit at 4:40pm in the same area as Friday's, near Muswellbrook, and was felt by 600 people.
Initially recorded as a magnitude-4.7 quake, it was revised down by Geoscience Australia.
It came after a series of aftershocks, ranging from magnitude-2.5 to 2.7 throughout the day.

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Grant
Darwin NT

How long will this activity continue? If past eruption phases in the area are anything to go by then 100-200 years, with all the major structures in the area being buried in that time. I hope the Iceland government has plans in hand for a new harbour and power plant.
What of the airport and Reykjavik? Well that's a big question, while not at immediate risk the road linking the two could easily be rendered unusable which would be a serious blow as there is only one airport in the country capable of handling large international flights - a new one needs to be built in a "safe" location within "easy" reach of Reykjavik (unless that city is moved somewhere else).

"all major structures"????? I didn't know it is this bad. With today's availability of heavy machinery (trucks, bulldozers, excavators) they can prepare dams to reroute Lava streams (e.g. the slope of terrain determines possible directions). It's a question of topography and economics: how much should they spend to save the harbour, village, roads, ... the airport?

As with a "new airport". Iceland reused the U.S. Airbase Keflavik to save the huge investments for two 10,000 ft runways. In this climate zone, runways in all four directions are probably needed to ensure year-round operations (frequent storms). Can a small country like Iceland (only 400K inhabitants) afford to build a new, quite large airport, capable for intercontinental operations like in Keflavik (8M PAX, ~80,000 aircraft movements, 40,000...60,000 tons of cargo)?

...and "move Reykjavik somewhere else"... is beyond imagination...

It is a worrying time.
The major structures in the immediate area are the power plant and its associated connections to the western half of the country, the roads (some of which have already been buried and re-routed, but those new routes are themselves under threat. Then there's one of the world's largest glass houses (it's huge!), a major maritime radio station (also used by trans-Atlantic air traffic - Iceland is more or less in the middle of one of the Great-Circle air corridors between Europe and North America). There's one of the world's largest glasshouses, a few hotels and more....
One thing that takes a bit to get one's head round is that this region is fairly flat, so very small changes in exact location can have very dramatic changes in which way the lava flows. If one of the recent eruptions had happened a couple of hundred meters north it would have probably cut the airport road instead of heading towards Grindavik (to the south), and that eruption was on what appeared to be a flat plane with barely a metre change in elevation over 1km!

Grindavik, and its harbour are under two threats from the current volcanic & seismic activity, first, and most obvious is the lava, which the can delay, but probably not stop in the long term. The second is the vast number of cracks, and voids that have opened up in the area - one estimate suggests that over a third of the building in the village have been seriously damaged by these together with localised uplift and subsidence. A lot of effort is being put into mapping these changes, but no sooner have they finished one round but another earthquake swarm comes along and re-draws the map ("old" features vanish, "new" ones arrive). - I think Grindavik and its harbour are not going to survive this sort of activity much longer, even if it doesn't get covered in lava :-(

The airport is a fun place to visit! Iceland's weather is predominately from the south west (spring to autumn) or north east (autumn to spring) so a bit of thought in runway direction could well make life much easier - as it is the two runways (which are aligned more or less north/south and east west) are rarely shut due to storms , but do have trouble with fog(!) All my flights to & from Iceland have used the East/West runway which has the clearer approaches.

Don't underestimate the Icelandic people, if they put their minds to building a new airport or a new city it would happen -but probably not needed in our lifetimes, but perhaps in a couple of hundred years?

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

From Val Troll's Volcano Channel https://www.youtube.com/@ValTroll

Grindavik, bent house 30 sec.

GRINDAVIK Abandoned; Ghost town 58 sec.

One thing that takes a bit to get one's head round is that this region is fairly flat, so very small changes in exact location can have very dramatic changes in which way the lava flows. If one of the recent eruptions had happened a couple of hundred meters north it would have probably cut the airport road instead of heading towards Grindavik (to the south), and that eruption was on what appeared to be a flat plane with barely a metre change in elevation over 1km!

2024-08-25 22:31 (larger, more detailed map linked):



updated Aug 26 17:30 UTC:

• Estimated extrusion rate at the beginning of the eruption is about 1,500 - 2,000 m3/s [1,961 ... 2,616 cu yds per second]
  
• activity today only a fraction of what it was. [...] several tens of cubic meters per second
  
• [...] eruption is the largest since the autumn of 2023
  
• [...] area of the lava field has reached 15.1 km2
  
• lava now flows mostly to the northwest in two main streams [...]
  

...to where the airport road runs... I estimate the latest lava streams were only 4 ... 5 kilometers short from reaching the airport road. Another such large eruption and...

Driving Through the Abandoned Town Grindavik During a Volcanic Eruption by Just Icelandic 12m 23sec.

Quite a few clips of before and after.

Driving Through the Abandoned Town Grindavik During a Volcanic Eruption by Just Icelandic 12m 23sec.

Scary: ~9m30s

This entire five-storey building and its surrounding was shifted vertically by a meter or more... as if it had been built without a deep foundation on permafrost, the upper layers of which thaw in summer.

It's not on permafrost, but on the solidified lava (in various forms) from previous eruptions.

I watched this video with sadness as I recognised places from my visits to Grindavik a few years back when the village was a buzzing community.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

It's shakin' down south again around those mines causing power outages this time.

NSW’s Hunter Region hit by 4.5 magnitude earthquake.

Another earthquake has rocked NSW’s Hunter Region, with people living across the state reporting being woken by rocking beds.

The Seismology Research Centre confirmed the quake hit just before 6am on Saturday morning, the latest in a string of shocks near the town of Muswellbrook in recent weeks.

“Another large earthquake has occurred near Muswellbrook NSW,” it reported.

“This magnitude 4.5 earthquake occurred at 5:58am local time.”

The earthquake has also been reported by the US Geological Survey as being a 4.5 magnitude event.......

Iceland, near the Blue Lagoon, has erupted again at 23:14 UTC 20 th Nov.

AfarTV - Live Now: 24/7 Iceland Volcanic Eruption Watch (Multi-cam)
mbl.is live streams youtube page

Prof Shawn Willsey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULRdzwdcW7E

2024-11-21 02:10: (Photo: Civil Protection/Björn Oddsson)

source: https://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/eruption-begins-on-the-sundhnukur-fissure-swarm

Latest news says the Blue Lagoon car park has been covered in lava.


Images too large to post here, https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2024/11/21/entire_blue_lagoon_car_park_now_covered_in_lava/

It is worth noting that the car park was outside the berm protected area for the Blue Lagoon itself.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Here is a good daylight photo of the former parking lot.

Looks like the Volcano God didn’t like the pavement job and decided to redo it.

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Opening of this Isak Finnbogason - ICELAND FPV video shows the parking lot location.