News
Skaftá river, 1st October 2015.

Jökulhlaup in Skaftá - progress

2.10.2015

Discharge

The measured discharge at Sveinstindur peaked around 2:00 this morning, just short of 2100 m³/s. However, true discharge must have been considerably greater, even 3000 m³/s, since a lot of the flood water now runs outside the area covered by the gauge.

The discharge at Eldvatn near Ásar peaked around 13:00 showing discharge of approximately 2200 m³/s. The area outside the main water channel will be flooded for coming days.

Gas measurements

Two SO2 sensors and one MultiGas have been installed in order to monitor the gas released from the glacial outburst occurring along the Skaftá river. The sensors have been streaming data to the Environmental Agency of Iceland.

The sensor installed in Sveinstindur is measuring quite low concentrations as confirmed by the personal sensor readings from the IMO's team in the field. The sensor installed in Skaftádalur showed a very high peak (up to 6,500 micrograms/m³) during the night, but shortly after this time the communication failed. The high value might be an artifact of it being washed away by flood water.

The MultiGas has been operated as part of the research project FutureVolc and is currently recording data. On the 1st of October people from Egilsstaðir, Snæfell and Seyðisfjörður reported smelling of sulphur due to the southwest winds carrying the contamination from Skaftá northeast of Vatnajökull.







Other related web sites


This website is built with Eplica CMS