Recent volcanic ‘Fires’ in Iceland triggered by storage and melting in the crust
Lava breakout from thick lava pile near Sundhnúkur vent in April 2024.
Iceland’s most recent volcanic episode on the Reykjanes peninsula, set to last centuries, began with vast magma pooling just beneath the surface. This is the result of a new study by an international team of researchers from the United States, Sweden, and Iceland, published in the journal Nature.
Initially, the recent lavas on the Reykjanes Peninsula were thought to have erupted directly from the mantle, but geochemical evidence shows that the magma comes from underground melting of the Earth's crust as a result of the ‘Fagradalsfjall fires’ that started in 2021. This was discovered by researchers in an international team from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University and the University of Iceland in Reykjavik.
Sampling of the erupted lavas at regular intervals enabled a detailed time-series analysis of geochemical signals. These show that the start of the eruption was fed by magma that was residing in the crust for some time, contrasting the initial hypothesis for magma ascent directly from the mantle. The results were published by the international research team on 31st of July in the journal Nature.
“It seems that the ‘fires’ in Iceland will last for some time longer, possibly years” said Valentin Troll, professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at Uppsala University and co-author of the study, and lead author on a recent study in Terra Nova, which investigated the magma plumbing system in the Reykjanes volcanic area.
Read the press release here: https://www.uu.se/en/press/press-releases/2024/2024-07-31-recent-volcanic-fires-in-iceland-triggered-by-storage-and-melting-in-the-crust