Iceland tells airlines Bardarbunga volcano under glacier may erupt, raises alert to orange

Omar R. Valdimarsson
Bloomberg
Mon, 18 Aug 2014 08:37 UTC

File photo: Bardarbunga, 7 November 1996
Seismic activity has been detected at Bardarbunga, including a strong earthquake

Iceland warned airlines that there may be an eruption at one of the island's largest volcanoes located underneath Vatnajokull, Europe's biggest glacier.

The alert level at Bardarbunga was raised to "orange," indicating "heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption," the Reykjavik-based Met Office said in a statement on its website. Over 250 tremors have been measured in the area since midnight. The agency said there are still no visible indications of an eruption.

The volcano is 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) wide and rises about 1,900 meters above sea level. Bardarbunga, which last erupted in 1996, can spew both ash and molten lava.

Ash from Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano forced flight cancellations in Scotland, northern England and Germany in May 2011. An eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in April 2010 caused the cancellation of more than 100,000 flights on concern glass-like particles formed from lava might melt in aircraft engines and clog turbines.

Comment: Given the news, this quote from an article that we published in 2011 seems timely and pertinent:

Bardarbunga's last major eruption was horrendous. It changed the weather pattern in northern Europe and darkened the skies for months during 1477. That gigantic eruption generated the largest lava flow in 10,000 years and significantly expanded Iceland's land mass.

Grim experts concede that if the volcano's current activity culminates in an eruption equal to that of 1477, all of Scandinavia and much of northern Russia and Europe will be left reeling.The UK will be slammed by choking volcanic dust, grit and poisonous superheated gases. Commerce will grind to a halt, the skies will blacken for weeks, perhaps months, and agriculture would be severely affected.

The late Cornell University professor, astronomer Carl Sagan, used the consequences of large volcanic eruptions impact on global cooling as part of his theoretical model for the frightening prospect of a nuclear winter.

Ken Caldeira, an earth scientist at Stanford University, California, and member of Britain's prestigious Royal Society working group on geo-engineering, explained that "dust sprayed into the stratosphere in volcanic eruptions is known to cool the Earth by reflecting light back into space."

That simple process has led to the starvation of whole nations in the past. Volcanic gases and dust suspended in the atmosphere cool the Earth to a point where the growing seasons significantly shrink and crops cannot reach maturity.