They say it's often wise to open a serious discussion with a good joke. Okay, here goes:
So clearly, given the quality of the above, one shouldn't expect the discussion tonight to be too serious. But it is - because today, in addition to talking about things that threaten health and safety with floods and toxic plumes, we're going to also talk about how this eruption might help save lives.
How? Like this?
Oh, come on, not even a smile? Okay, I give up - let's start tonight's Eldfjallavakt!
On this blog, we've watched as shiny new models for volcanic gases have come to life, such as FLEXPART:
These can be used in future events to help alert people in advance to potential pollution surges from volcanic eruptions, which can be especially important to vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, and people with breathing or heart conditions.
Here's a new model you've probably never seen before - the Met Office's runs:
They're now making use of CALPUFF simulations. Like FLEXPART, it's unfortunately not pre-initialized with existing levels of volcanic gases, so it's always as if the eruption just began and all other air is clean - that is, you can expect underestimates every day. That said, I greatly appreciate their high resolution on Iceland and their provision of concentration information. Keys:
0-300 µg/m³: Green. Healthy people should not experience negative effects. People with breathing conditions are unlikely to have significant problems. According to the World Health Organization, long (24h+) exposures to more than the lower end of this spectrum (20µg/m³) can have negative consequences on general mortality rates and plant life, but brief exposures are not usually problematic even to sensitive populations.
300-600 µg/m³: Yellow. Healthy people unlikely to experience symptoms. Sensitive individuals may experience discomfort. According to the World Health Organization, brief (10 minute) exposures to more than 500 µg/m³ increases general mortality rates.
600-3000 µg/m³: Orange. Healthy people may experience symptoms. Sensitive individuals are likely to experience breathing problems. All people are advised to avoid heavy activity outdoors and sensitive individuals should avoid outdoor activity in general.
3000-9000 µg/m³: Red. All people regardless of health likely to experience symptoms such as headache, eye pain, difficulty breathing, and so forth. Described as similar to breathing exhaust. Everyone is advised to remain indoors, close the windows, shut off air circulation systems, and if possible turn up radiators to create positive pressure.
9000-14000 µg/m³: Purple. Everyone is likely to experience symptoms, ranging from moderate to severe. Sensitive individuals exposed to such levels can be in serious medical risk; taking precautions is essential.
14000 µg/m³?: Maroon. Everyone not taking shelter is likely to experience serious, potentially life-threatening symptoms.
Brown: The Icelandic Environmental Agency doesn't even have an alert available for this color, so I can't look up its levels.
Looking at the map, you can see how deadly serious it can be to walk into the eruption zone without gas meters and masks, and why a number of times it has been essential to evacuate personel. With these and other tools, it becomes easier to keep the public informed.
But let's take a step back from Holuhraun. Let's take a step back from Bárðarbunga. Let's even step away from Vatnajökull and jump hundreds of kilometers away to a different volcano: Hekla. The eruption of Bárðarbunga has gotten people talking about her again (example here), and whether there should be a permanent airspace closure over her - a discussion that really needs to be had.
(Credit: Sverrir Þórólfsson)
What's so special about Hekla? Well, let's jump briefly back in time. Helka managed to really get a bad reputation in the Middle Ages:
How did she manage to do that? Well, she's a very powerful, very ashy volcano. She's produced about 10% of the tephra (solid matter ejected into the plume) in Iceland in the last thousand years, including all of the largest single-event deposits. Hekla alone is responsible for 1/3rd of the ash falls in Scandinavia. Her andesitic (moderately silicon rich) tephra ranges from fine ash to lava bombs with a range of dozens of kilometers, and contains large amounts of fluorine.
While ancient eruptions have been much worse (such as the 1159BC H3 eruption which left a decade long gap in Ireland's tree rings), the eruption that made her famous was the 1104 H1 eruption. In Iceland, the H1 eruption's 2.5 cubic kilometers of tephra caused Sandfallsvetur, or the "Sandfall Winter". In Europe, tales of Hekla ranged from allusions to her being like hell to the concept that she was the literal entrance to Hell. Herbert de Clairvaux wrote in 1180, "The renowned fiery cauldron of Sicily, which men call Hell's chimney ... that cauldron is affirmed to be like a small furnace compared to this enormous inferno." In Benedict's writings about St. Brendan, she was the prison of Judas. In the 1500s Casper Peucer wrote that the entrance to Hell was to be found in "the bottomless abyss of Hekla Fell." Her reputation became such that when Laki erupted in 1783-1784, it was often misreported in Europe and the Americas that the eruption was in Hekla.
Hekla hasn't erupted since 2000, and her eruptions have of late come at about 10 year intervals - 2000, 1991, 1980/81, and 1970. So why are we talking about this - are there danger signs that Hekla could be getting ready to go off?
No. And that's precisely the problem. Helka doesn't usually give warning.
(Credit: Michel Detay)
This is an unusual property among Icelandic volcanoes, and volcanoes in general. Since measurements began, Hekla's warning from the commencement of activity to the beginning of the plume has ranged from only 23 to 79 minutes. From there, it takes only 5 to 20 minutes for the plume to reach flight level. In short, there can be under half an hour to figure out what's going on with any degree of confidence, alert air traffic controllers, alert pilots, and route planes out of the area - much too short of a period for comfort.
Over a dozen passenger jets fly right over Hekla on a typical day, containing hundreds of passengers each. It's a real threat that has been left unaddressed for too long.
Will Bárðarbunga's current activity indirectly lead to an airspace closure over Hekla? I have no clue - that is a debate for which I will not be part of. I present it simply as another example of how repercussions of the current activity can have positive effects.
But there are also positive effects that we can play a role in.
Iceland is a very rugged country full of risks. It's easier to make a list of what natural disasters we don't get than which ones we do, and most types are unusually frequent. The population density is one of the lowest in the world and people can get themselves into serious trouble very far from civilization. Which is why we rely on our volunteer Björgunarsveitir (rescue teams).
(Above: Rescue workers save Sean Rose, a paralympics champion who became stranded on a glacier suffering from severe blood poisoning.)
Last summer alone, the Björgunarsveitir saved 12 people's lives - of them, 7 were children - in a country with a total population less than that of Anaheim, California. One rescuer broke her ankle in the process and 10 thousand dolars of equipment was ruined. They work with limited resources, and sometimes the job is pretty crappy. But they're a critical part of our national safety net. If we assume that six Icelanders would die every year without them in a normal year, and an average lifespan of 80 years, that works out to about one in every 330 people being saved by them at some point in their lives.
If - and we all hope this isn't the case - the situation in Bárðarbunga should turn bad, be it a major explosive eruption or large jökulhlaup, you better believe they'd play a critical role in dealing with the consequences.
Many people have been telling me that they want to thank me for this series by sending me money as thanks. And I've always felt really weird about this. I write about this because I find it fascinating (even if a bit scary sometimes) and I'm in a good position to report on what's happening. No, if you want to thank me, don't send me money. Send them money. I'm hereby launching the Daily Kos Styrktarátak Slysavarnarfélagsins Landsbjargar - the Daily Kos fundraiser for ICESAR, Icelandic Search and Rescue. How much can we raise? $500? $1000? I don't know, but I'm going to start it of with a donation of 4000 krónur (about $35).
I'm going to keep this going for a week. Nobody needs to feel pressured to donate, but if you do, please let me know how much you sent in a comment or message in so I can keep a running total. :) And if this works well, then if the eruption changes to worse form and there's a new need for a different kind of support (housing for displaced people, assistance to ranchers, etc), I may run a drive for that.
Okay - on to the update on the current status from Bárðarbunga / Holuhraun!
As you may have noticed from the maps, residents of Blönduós will be waking to 600-3000 µg/m³ from 9 AM to 3 PM. The "large" town of Akureyri will get a lesser plume, then it will reverse direction and arrive near Höfn around 7 PM. If the forecast is right, pollution levels will be similar to that in Blönduós, but if it shifts just a little bit to the south, air quality could be quite dangerous. The situation will persist until at least early Saturday.
There were no meters in the area forecast to be affected yesterday, of most concern the popular Geysir/Gullfoss area, so there is no way to know how bad it got. However, the forecast map last night shifted north from the original forecast, so I suspect there wasn't much there.
The eruption on Holuhraun continues unabated, and water from the Jökulsár á Fjöllum continues to reach the meter at Upptyppingar. Lava fountains on Holuhraun are currently about 40 meters high, continuing similar visible activity to yesterday.
(Credit: Gro Birkefeldt Møller Pedersen)
Here's the latest names for the craters:
(Credit: Ármann Höskuldsson)
A new gas emissions estimate is out, and it's good news. They've lowered their SO2 estimates to 200-600 kg/s, although they note that this could be an underestimate and they'll be getting much better figures later this week. More good news - our first hydrogen fluoride numbers are out, and they're low. As a reminder, hydrogen fluride from volcanoes like Laki and Hekla have on a number of occasions significantly contaminated our water, killed vast amounts of livestock in Iceland and causing dangerous degrees of skeletal fluorosis in humans. Laki emitted about 7% as much HF as he emitted SO2. But here on Holuhraun the emissions are only 1.5% of the SO2 figures.
This is something to smile about. Because fluorosis sucks.
Quake activity in Bárðarbunga continues to be, to use a technical term, "bonkers".
And subsidence in the caldera continues on at about the same pace, 50 centimeters per day:
Just a couple pictures now and we'll call it a night.
(Credit: Gro Birkefeldt Møller Pedersen)
(Credit: Stéphanie Dumont)
(Credit: Gro Birkefeldt Møller Pedersen)
... And for any of you who donated ...
(Credit: You)
Update, 3:00: I'm headed to bed now, but wow, we're already up to $295? You guys are awesome!
Update, 9:35: I just tallied the numbers from while I'm sleeping... $795! I bet we're actually going to hit $1000 here :) :)
Update, 13:30: $980 - so close!
Ooh, just checking my email... I sent ICESAR a message last night letting them know what's going on, and I got a response today sent at 9:53. They said that they came into the office this morning surprised to suddenly find donations streaming into them - they're following the series and are highly appreciative. They say that $1385 came from 35 people, so that's even more than we've registered here :) (a lot of people read these but don't have Daily Kos accounts) . FarWestGirl had the suggestion of adding .01 to donations to help make it clear that its part of the styrktarátak from Daily Kos. :)
Update, 8:10: I got another email from ICESAR. As of 6:13 PM today, you all have donated, 77 individuals, wait for it... $2975 (!!!). Way, way too awesome. I bet that by the time this is all done we're going to break $5k!