August 1, 2021 - The Land of Ice and Fire
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Iceland
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On July 30, 2021, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of
Iceland on a warm summer’s day. Although low cloud shrouds the southern
shores and fills the low-lying northern fjords and valleys, the deep
greens of summer vegetation, tans of rugged rock, and pristine white of
snow-capped highlands, glaciers, and ice caps are easily viewed in this
image.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) explains that ice caps
are miniature ice sheets. Like icefields, ice caps cover less than
50,000 square kilometers (19,300 square miles). Unlike icefields, ice
caps completely blanket the underlying land features and are domes that
spread in all directions. Iceland’s four permanent ice caps are
Langjokull and Hofsjokull in the interior west, Myrdalsjokull on the
southern coast, and Vatnajokull on the eastern coast. Vatnajokull is
the largest of the four and it covers three active volcanoes—just one
reason that Iceland has been called the “land of ice and fire”.
Iceland sits on a mid-ocean ridge at the intersection of two tectonic
plates. The North American and Eurasian tectonic plates cross the
island from south to north, and are slowly pulling apart. As the plates
retreat, magma from deep in the Earth wells up to the surface, creating
lava fields and volcanic activity. There are about 30 active volcanoes
on Iceland today.
The most recent eruption occurred on the Reykjanes peninsula in
mid-March 2021 when the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted after lying
dormant for 800 years. The on-going eruption can be seen in the image
as a bright red hot spot covered with thin cloud located on the
southwestern side of the island. The Fagradalsfjall eruption is
primarily effusive, with lava flowing from fissures rather than being
violently ejected. On July 26, the University of Iceland’s Institute of
Earth Sciences published a report on the ongoing eruption that gave an
estimate of the total lava erupted from all vents so far measures about
96.1 cubic meters.
Image Facts
Satellite: Aqua
Date Acquired: 7/30/2021
Resolutions: 1km (807.8 KB), 500m (2.4 MB), 250m (6.8 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-08-01
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