The country’s meteorological service reported that a volcano erupted close to Iceland’s capital on Monday, making it the third time in the past two years that lava has spilled forth in the area.
The location is about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Reykjavik and is depicted in local media footage as having a sizable lava flow and a cloud of smoke rising from the earth.
An AFP correspondent said that vehicles have pulled over and people are taking pictures as they watch the smoke from the road leading from the capital to the airport.
“The eruption is taking place in a small depression just north of Litli Hrutur (‘Little Ram’ in Icelandic) from which smoke is escaping in a north-westerly direction,” the meteorological office said.
“There are three fissures with lava basically running in all directions,” Thorvaldur Thordarson, Professor in Volcanology at University of Iceland, told AFP.
He added that the fissures are in total around 200 to 300 meters long and “it is a low intensity, effusive eruption.”
This means “it’s not causing widespread threats due to explosive activity” but “if the eruption continues for long enough it could be a threat to infrastructure.”
In the week before the eruption, the region saw thousands of minor earthquakes, which indicated that the magma beneath the ground was moving and an eruption was about to occur.
The site is in a dangerous area without a road link, and the Icelandic authorities recommended against visiting it before assessing the situation.
At roughly 1640 GMT, the magma erupted through the earth, just a few kilometers from two earlier eruptions in the previous two years.
First, on March 19, 2021, in the Geldingadalur valley, it lasted six months; second, on August 3, 2022, in the Meradalir valley, it lasted three weeks.
The area had been quiescent for eight centuries before to the 2021 eruption, but volcanologists think the new cycle of heightened activity could endure for several years.
So far, the effusive eruptions in this region have not been very harmful or interfered with aviation traffic in any way.
A unique opportunity to see an active volcano attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists during the eruptions of 2021 and 2022.
The duration of the eruption, according to Thordarson, could range from “a few days” to as long as six months, as it did in 2021.
