Sulfur dioxide. Some general figures from "Global Ambient Air Pollution Concentration and Trends" and other sources:
20 µg/m³: WHO 24-hour safety limit. Beyond this point, the overall mortality rate statistically increases (it pushes people who are on the edge over)
20 µg/m³: EU air standards annual mean limit. If average annual SO2 levels in an area exceed this level, the area is in non-compliance.
52 µg/m³: Average SO2 concentration in major Chinese cities.
125 µg/m³: 24-hour EU air quality standard. If an area averages above this level for 24 hours more than three times in a year, it is in non-compliance.
142 µg/m³: Average levels in Beijing during January, the most polluted month of the year.
350 µg/m³: 1-hour EU air quality standard. If an area averages above this level for 1 hour more than 24 times in a year, it is in non-compliance.
500 µg/m³: WHO 10-minute safety limit. Even short-term exposure to these levels can cause minor irritation to healthy individuals and can cause health complications for people with breathing disorders, heart disease, children, and other vulnerable populations.
500 µg/m³: EU alert threshold. If levels exceed this point for three consecutive hours, a public health alert is issued for the area.
1000 µg/m³: Highest daily concentrations taken from the air next to Russian smelters.
Beyond this, sulfur dioxide acts in concert with particulate matter to dramatically lower the required SO2 levels for complications to occur.
With this backdrop, the air quality first measured in Austfirðir that I reported on previously - 660 µg/m³, by far the highest ever previously measured in Iceland - isn't pretty. But, these things fluctuate depending on the weather. The next day, levels were low. Then yesterday they were high again. Today began with reports about levels being low again.
But that's when I noticed something wierd on a data plot. And others noticed it in a much less pleasant manner.
Join us for Eldfjallavakt below the fold.
I was checking in on the pollutant meters at Reyðarfjörður and I noticed something strange. A spike way higher than I thought possible had begun. I immediately credited it to a glitch. Except that the other two meters on the site showed almost the exact same thing. I still had trouble believing it:
Could that be right? Maybe they were recalibrating the meters or something - surely the levels couldn't be that high.
It turned out, they were.
Across the whole Eastfjörds, the plume descended. The national protective services told people to keep their children inside, their windows shut, and to shut off any air circulation systems.
The levels topped out at nearly 2600 µg/m³.
A resident of Fjarðarbyggð described it thusly:
There came only darkness behind the mountains and draped over and cloaked everything to the mountain peaks," says Ari Sigursteinsson, a foreman at Fjarðarbyggð, who was out on the street when the pollution clouds from the volcano in Holuhraun draped over Reyðarfjörður earlier today.
He says that it happened rapidly. "It was like at one moment it was clear skies and then all of the sudden overcast.“
Ari says that no smell had come with the pollution. „You don't notice the smell when breathing in, but a little while later it gets you in your respiratory system and throat. It's devious.“
„I experienced it as if I was in an enclosed space with a running diesel engine. I got a bad taste in my mouth, felt pain in my throat and eyes and got a terrible headache,“ says Ari, who knows diesel engines well. His coworker who was operating an excavator when the cloud came in had thought that the cab of the machine was filling with exhaust.
I wish I could say that this is the worst it's going to get. But just like before... there really is no known upper bound. And it's doing this to people well over a hundred kilometers away. I feel terrible for the people in the firing line over there. If I hear of anyone who needs a place to stay in Reykjavík for a while to get away from it I'll definitely offer my guest bedroom.
The eruption on Holuhraun that is the source of all of this continues, as always, unabated. There's so much bad to write about this. So let's take a second to talk about things that could make people happy.
First? Love.
A plane taking tourists on a tour over the eruption today had an unexpected surprise when Dutch tourist Suzanne van Dijk used the opportunity to ask her boyfriend Rick Spanjer to marry her. He accepted right away.
Love is nice, but it doesn't make a cold-hearted industrialist's heart melt. But a dam made of hot, hot lava might.
Back in 1970, a proposal was set forth: „Austurlandsvirkjun og virkjun Jökulsár á Fjöllum“, a proposal to build a huge 1.7 GW hydroelectric plant by damming up the Jökulsár á Fjöllum and redirecting it to the east, near Kárahnjúkur (taking away 2/3rds of Dettifoss's flow in the process). Well, the prospect of the river getting dammed up when the lava gets to Vaðalda is a real one. Could nature do what what man could not? Well, probably not. The most likely result even from a very large "Þorbjargarhraun lava dam" would be to redirect the Jökulsár into Kreppa to the east, which would then rejoin the regular Jökulsár flow east of Herðubreið.
Aww, poor industrialists :(. But at least they can console themselves with the massive amount of hot rock that nature is leaving ready to be tapped for geothermal power.
Now, as we all know...
But, apparently, one can fly. Gandalf - or Sir Ian McKellon, as he apparently prefers to be called - is apparently in Iceland right now, assumedly via help from the Eagles of the Misty Mountains. We can only assume that he's on his way with Legolas to fight their way through trolls to confront the Balrog within Bárðarbunga's magma chamber.
Okay. Let's get serious again. Because the quakes keep getting more serious.
The powerful quakes in the caldera seem to keep coming ever faster. While I was writing this, yet another 5.2 quake hit. At one point, two powerful quakes hit only 14 seconds apart. Each time something snaps, the caldera subsides.
As before, there seems to be a near universal perception that - while one always has to mention "the subsidence could always just stop" to cover their bases - that the end result will be the same, a large caldera eruption. The questions that seem to be hovering are not if, but when, and how big.
How far down will Bárðarbunga subside? The short off it is, nobody really knows. There's only been one major caldera forming event in Iceland since Iceland was settled (Askja 1875), and it was not well studied at the time. Bárðarbunga could subside 100 meters, we really don't know.
Ranchers are still trying to round up their sheep early. But they don't have space for them. They're trying to push up the standard slaughter schedule but there's not enough capacity for everyone to come at once. The district veternary office has been designated an emergency slaughterhouse should the situation become dire enough.
So we just wait and watch. And in the meantime, we really hope that the plume doesn't aim at us. Sometimes in life, it's best to not worry too much and just take time to stop and smell the rainbows.
Or something like that. I was never good with metaphors.
(Above: Picture from my land this evening)
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Here's today's FLEXPART SO2 forecast:
Here's the size of the lava flow thusfar compared to Manhattan (slightly out of date):
And a few miscellaneous:
Sorry, no video today! Hopefully I'll have time to put one together tomorrow.
