An eruption — the eighth on the same volcanic rift since late 2023 — started at 9:45 a.m. local time on Tuesday “just north of the protective barrier by Grindavik,” the Met Office said in a statement. The eruptive rift reached behind the protective barriers that have saved the town in the most recent incidents, it said.
Reykjavik, which lies about about 40 kilometers (25 miles) away, has been unaffected by the recent outbursts, and air traffic at nearby Keflavik international airport is not expected to be disrupted.
The area on the southwest peninsula has awakened after an 800-year dormancy, first with seismic activity in 2020 followed by an intensifying sequence of lava outbursts. The molten rock is emerging from rifts in the ground, producing steady flows but forming little ash.
Earthquakes and deadly cracks have caused widespread damage to fishing town Grindavik, which used to be home to about 1% of the Icelandic nation. Lava has claimed three houses in a previous eruption but earth barriers built around the town have managed to steer most of the lava flow away from buildings. Some residents have continued to live in the town, fleeing as each eruption has begun.
“The length of the magma dyke under the Sundhnuksgigar Crater Row that has already formed is about 11 kilometers (6.8 miles) long which is the longest it has been measured since November 11, 2023,” the Met Office said. The volume of magma in the area is the largest since the eruption sequence began at the end of that year, it said last month.
The scientists will look at the eruption from a helicopter to map out its exact location, the office said.
On Monday, 40 of the town’s about 1,100 homes were occupied and have since been evacuated, broadcaster RUV said, citing local police.
Other infrastructure in the area includes the Svartsengi power plant owned by HS Orka hf and a number of businesses centered around geothermal heat and power. Iceland’s top tourist attraction, the Blue Lagoon, is also nearby. Those assets have been spared damage but roads, and water and electricity pipes have required repeated repairs.
Iceland is one of the world’s volcanic hot spots due to its position on the mid-Atlantic ridge where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates rift apart. Scientists have warned that a new era of activity has started on the Reykjanes peninsula.
Previous Incidents
Before the Grindavik eruptions, Icelanders had not experienced volcanic events of this scope for half a century. The latest equally devastating incident happened in 1973 in the Westman Islands off its southern coast.
One of the most disruptive eruptions in Iceland’s recent history happened in 2010 when volcano Eyjafjallajokull in the southern part of the country released a plume of ash so vast that it grounded air traffic across Europe for weeks, resulting in the cancellation of 100,000 flights and affecting over 10 million people.
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