The volcanic fissures near the recent eruption in Grindavik have become seriously active once again, with eruptions occurring several times in only a month’s time. Now NASA has released images from space revealing what’s going on.
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00:00Geologists seem to agree, Iceland has now entered a new age of volcanism.
00:09The volcanic fissures near the recent eruption in Grindavík have become seriously active
00:13once again, with several eruptions occurring in only a month's time.
00:17This comes after 800 years of relative quietude, marking the end of the fissure's dormancy.
00:22Now NASA has released new satellite imagery of the area, revealing just how much heat
00:27is spewing out of those very cracks.
00:29The heat map doesn't give exact temperatures, however cooler areas are noted in blue and
00:33white, with hotter areas shown in red and yellow.
00:36What is well illustrated here, however, is just how massive these volcanic fissures are.
00:41You can see here the town of Grindavík, and just northeast the heat from the hottest of
00:45the fissures, with the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program pointing out that the fissures
00:49grew to nearly 3,000 feet wide.
00:51What the heat map doesn't show is what's going on underground, with volcanologists
00:55saying the magma chamber has moved south, now stretching under Grindavík.
00:59Iceland is one of the most volcanically active places in the world, straddling the Mid-Atlantic
01:04Ridge where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet.