Marie-Helene Carleton

Aug 6, 2024 | scientificamerican.com | Micah Garen |Marie-Helene Carleton |Dominic Smith

On-screen text: REYKJANES PENINSULAICELANDÞorvaldur Þórðarson: They’re mesmerizing when you’re looking at them. You can sit and watch the lava fountains for hours, and you don’t even realize that, you know, several hours have passed that you’ve been sitting there. Ármann Höskuldsson: The importance of volcanoes? Of course, if we wouldn’t have volcanoes, we wouldn’t have our atmosphere. That’s maybe the most important thing. Freysteinn Sigmundsson: What is really down there inside [the] volcano?

Dec 22, 2023 | scientificamerican.com | Micah Garen |Marie-Helene Carleton |Jason Drakeford |Jeffery DelViscio

The eruption in Iceland may look beautiful, but what is happening just below the surface is threatening safety and livelihoods on the surface. On December 18, a volcano emerged on the Reykjanes peninsula in Iceland, just north of the town of Grindavik, near the world famous Blue Lagoon. The volcanoes on the Reykjanes peninsula have awakened after eight hundred years.  The tectonic plates of Eurasia and North America are moving apart.