Weather has been problem for monitoring instruments on Mýrdalsjökull glacier this winter

Bad weather has been a major problems for monitoring Katla volcano (and others also) this winter in Iceland. Not only has the bad weather damaged communications setup for the instruments in question. But also has a lot of snowfall prevented solar chargers and windmills that generate power for this instruments made them fail. In many cases the instruments them self are also under several meters of snow in few cases.

This means that for long periods during this winter there have been no data recorded on several SIL stations on Mýrdalsjökull glacier. But last week technicians from Icelandic Meteorological Office and University of Iceland did go up to Mýrdalsjökull glacier to try and fix the broken instruments and hardware in question. They had some success. But have to return later to repair the hardware they where not able to repair this time around.

Icelandic news about this repair mission can be found here. This news is in Icelandic.

Mýrdalsjökull leikur mælitæki grátt (Rúv.is, Icelandic)
Fréttir: Jökullinn leikur mælitæki grátt (Icelandic, Video)

Picture and video of Eyjafjallajökull volcano

Here is a picture of Eyjafjallajökull volcano that I took in December 2012. This is not a good picture. But that is mostly down to bad weather and strong wind at the time.


Click on the image for full size. This image is released under Creative Commons licence. Please see the CC Licence page for more details on this licence.

Here is a video that I took from this same area. It shows how bad the weather was.

Craters in Grímsfjall volcano clearly visible

The craters from last years eruption in Grímsfjall volcano are clearly visible on new pictures that Rúv did release in the evening news. There also seems to be some increase in hydro-thermal activity in Grímsfjall volcano. Based on the pictures and what was reported in the Rúv news this evening (02.06.2012).

When the eruption was at it largest last year, the crater was around 1.5 km in size. But once the power started to drop in the eruption, the single crater did turn into several small craters. The glacier is slowly closing this new crater. In few years time, there are not going to be many signs in this are that an large eruption took place there.

The new images can be viewed in this news on Rúv news web page.

Gígarnir í Grímsvötnum greinilegir (Icelandic, Video)