Satellite mages indicate the end of the eruption is near

There has been a good opportunity to observe the process of the eruption at Sundhnúkagígar crater row in the last few days, as the conditions for satellite observations have been unique.

This has been used by the Department of Volcanology and Natural Science at the University of Iceland to analyze the volcanic situation, for example by comparing images from ESA and NASA/USGS, or different satellites.

“Our observations indicate that the magma flow has decreased significantly between March 27 and today and that magma flows have decreased by up to half in the last day,” the unit’s Facebook post states.

The depression between Hagafell and Sundhnúkur almost full of magma.

Reduced thermal radiation

In the entry, it is also stated that a comparison of images from the satellite Sentinel shows that between March 27 and March 29 or in 48 hours, the lava flow has decreased closer to the crater and the activity in the lava field has decreased to Hagafell. Furthermore, the third crater is less visible in the image on March 29 as can be seen in the brownish picture.

When viewing images from the Landsat satellite from March 29 to March 30, or in 24 hours, one can see that the total heat output from the volcanoes decreases in this one day.

“This coincides with what is seen on web cameras, but the northernmost crater is the only one which is active in any way today. This brings the end of this volcanic eruption closer, which has been ongoing for just over 2 weeks,” the report says.