The eruption formed a curtain of fire the height of Big Ben.
-Robert Green
Faced with the prospect of an imminent volcanic eruption, most people would head for safety, but for one group of Cambridge research students, the aim is to get as close as they realistically can.
That opportunity suddenly presented itself when, on the night of August 28, 2014, members of the University’s Volcano Seismology group were shaken awake by a series of low-magnitude earthquakes. The tremors were being caused by the movement of an underground channel of molten rock which they had been tracking for 10 days as it forced its way north-east from the Barðarbunga volcano in central Iceland.
The group’s work involves measuring and studying such seismic events, which warn that a volcanic eruption may be about to take place. As it became clear that this was now imminent, the team hastily finished deploying field instruments around the tip of the area where they knew the channel was flowing. Just hours later, it ruptured the Earth’s surface, disgorging huge fountains of magma that reached up to 150 metres high, announcing the start of Iceland’s biggest volcanic event for 200 years.
The story of the group’s dramatic fieldwork – and why it matters – is now the subject of a display at this year’s Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, which will be taking place in London this week (4-10 July 2016).
Watch a video and read the full story
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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