Disagrees with the Icelandic Met Office about the eruption

Þorvaldur Þórðarson, professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland, says that this eruption does not differ from previous eruptions at Sundhnúkagígar crater row.

The volcanic eruption that erupted on December 18, for example, lasted for about four days and took a while for the lava to harden.

Þórðarson believes it’s most likely that the eruption will be over sometime tomorrow or the day after. It could even stop overnight, he added.

Lava flows over-estimated at the beginning

When asked why the eruption seems to last longer than expected at first, he says that he believes that the productivity was overestimated at the beginning, that it was considerably smaller than the 400 cubic meters per second that scientists talked about.

It is therefore taking longer to clear.

“You always have the same volume. How fast it goes depends on how much you take out per time unit. The more you take out at the beginning, the sooner you emptyit,” he says.

Disagrees with the Icelandic Met Office

He says that activity is decreasing in the eruption and disagrees with the Met Office that it has been stable since yesterday.

“They’re looking at the seismic activity and they’re interpreting it from there, but it’s not necessarily a measure of how much lava is coming out, or at least it’s not a precise measure of it.”

Þórðarson believes that the eruption is slowing down slowly but steadily, which makes it harder to understand how it is decreasing.

The lava has reached its length

“These are small changes, but I think it’s more like a reduction in the eruption. For example, the lava flow has slowed down considerably since yesterday afternoon.”

Gas pollution has also decreased significantly.

He believes the lava field has reached its ideal length. While the situation remains the current flow is going to build up the lava field. It will then go mostly to improve the thickness of the lava next to the crater, but not to add to the length, he says.