Posted on by Jón Frímann

Glacier cauldrons at top of Bárðarbunga volcano caldera rim

During the eruption in Bárðarbunga volcano and the collapse of the caldera. A hydrothermal activity was seen on top of Bárðarbunga volcano caldera. Since the eruption in Holuhraun ended in February-2015 this hydrothermal activity has dropped, it has increased if anything. At the moment there are several depressions in the Vatnajökull glacier that is on top of Bárðarbunga volcano. Largest of them are 400 meters wide, I am not sure about their length. This cauldrons are around 100 meters deep and for the first time in several hundreds of years have exposed a bed rock that is normally under the glacier. Hydrothermal activity in Bárðarbunga volcano is now such that is able to melt 100 meters of glacier in several months.

This high amount of hydrothermal activity in the main volcano increases my suspicion that Bárðarbunga volcano is far from over. Since this also means that fresh magma is reaching up to 1 km in the crust in the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera rim. I don’t have any map of the locations of the calderas at the moment since none exist or at least has not yet been published. The main concern now is that this is going to increase the risk of sudden glacier floods from Bárðarbunga volcano. This might also increase the risk of sudden short volcano eruptions in Bárðarbunga volcano, either in its slopes or close to the caldera rim. As it is clear that magma has rather clear access to that part of the volcano.

Rúv News article (in Icelandic)

Gat í gegnum jökulinn (Rúv.is, Icelandic, video)

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Article updated at 23:51 UTC. Text fixes.

16 Replies to “Glacier cauldrons at top of Bárðarbunga volcano caldera rim”

  1. Jon,
    try https://glovis.usgs.gov/

    – Pan to BB.
    Left: Choose Your Data set(s) –> Enable ‘Sentinel-2’

    Bottom right: Klick “next” to ‘Acquired on 2017-07-25 at 08:55:54’
    See the couldrons you like on that sunny day.
    🙂

  2. Thanks Gizmo although I like the Aug 1st view.

    There has been a lot of ice melt up there. Looks to me like the length is about 9 km and about 3 km at its widest.

  3. Please remember to donate. It appears that September is going to be awful month for me financially. I have been bridging the gap by using my visa credit card and pushing the problems forward between months. It is the only way I can deal with it at the moment. It is not a good option but it is better then not paying the bills (since that is a worse options).

    I also had to buy new shoes and get a haircut this month. I had to get a new shoes because the one I had are used up and had holes in them that allowed small stones to get in and where just really bad to walk in (like painfully bad). I had to get a haircut because I had too much hair on my head (I don’t like that).

    As I explained in the the earlier article I’ve found a solution to this issue but implementing it is 11 months away at the moment. The situation is going to get slightly better in 4 months from what it is today.

    I also want to add a minor correction about Paypal. They do take a small fee when donated with my Icelandic Paypal account and it costs 4€ to transfer the amount to my credit card (no other options available for Iceland).

    Thanks for the support. 🙂

  4. Still small but a couple of EQ’s have shown up at Katla with Conductivity slowly rising and has been doing since the weekend, Two of those are around 6km in depth with 90% quality at the moment

  5. A reasonably strong earthquake (MW 1.4) at a depth of 15.8 km very close to Hvannadalshnjúkur.
    Probably magma at this depth Jón?

    1. This is magma and this is interesting activity. I don’t know if this is going to result in a eruption just yet. It might take ~20 years before something happens.

      The only areas in Iceland that only have earthquakes when magma is at work are this volcanoes.

      South-East Iceland.
      Öræfajökull
      Esjufjöll
      Snæfell (East Iceland)

      Western Iceland (this area of Iceland is not properly monitored).
      Snæfellsjökull
      Helgrindur (Also known as Lysuhóll/Lysukard)
      Ljósufjöll

      This areas don’t have a lot of tectonic earthquakes. Intra-plate earthquake swarm do happen from time to time, but normally at locations outside the volcano areas in this parts of Iceland.

  9. The 4.1 has since been revised up to 4.7 by IMO > Thursday
    07.09.2017 03:08:11 64.663 -17.407 0.1 km 4.7 99.0 6.3 km ENE of Bárðarbunga

  10. What are the chances are that these EQ’s are partly to do with the Sun from last night? There’s quite a few strong/medium EQ’s around Iceland today, or is it just one of those peak times in the month where they tend to be quite big?

      1. Oh, don’t, Thomas. I am looking at the Mexico EQ and wondering the same thing myself. I also wonder about the effects of massive amounts of rain from hurricanes. We have already seen subsidence from Harvey. All in favor of the big picture when it comes to earth events. I’ll probably get slapped down now.?

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