The Earth Story

Snæfellsjökull

This mountain, part of Snæfellsjökull national park, sits at the far western tip of a peninsula on Iceland’s western shore. It is a volcano covered by glaciers, built up over several million years.

The far western tip of Iceland contains volcanoes, but they’re not as active as central or Eastern Iceland. A few million years ago, both the Iceland Hotspot and the rift system associated with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge were found basically here; however, that hotspot is moving to the East over time and dragging the ridge with it. Today that hotspot is centered in Eastern Iceland, basically beneath the large icecap in that area.

This volcano has still been occasionally active over the last 10,000 years even though the hotspot has moved away, a bit of molten rock still finds the old path up to this spot. The ice layers on its side contain ash units blasted out of the volcano and then buried by subsequent snow.

The beautiful lenticular clouds are created from airmasses coming in off the surrounding ocean. As the winds push air into the mountain, the air must rise, and rising air must cool. Cooling of that air as it is pushed up can trigger the formation of stationary clouds over the summit, as seen here.

-JBB

Image credit: https://flic.kr/p/296vMhZ

Reference: https://www.nature.com/articles/353062a0 https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/7098/1/541452.pdf

Cairn building on a rocky beach, Iceland. Notice how coarse grained the backbeach is - where only the highest currents and largest waves reach, the fine sand has all been eroded away.