The skies cleared in the area below the Eyjafjöll mountain range around 3 pm today after significant ash fall, extremely poor visibility and almost constant darkness since late last week.
South Iceland on Saturday. Photo by Bjarni Brynjólfsson.
GPS monitors show deflation at the eruption site on Eyjafjallajökull glacier, which indicates that the volume of magma in the magma chambers underneath the glacier is dwindling and that volcanic activity might be subsiding, ruv.is reports.
The level of fluorine in the ash which has been emitted from the craters on Eyjafjallajökull in the past 24 hours is four to five times higher than before.
Geologist Níels Óskarsson at the University of Iceland Faculty of Earth Sciences said the reason is that ash is now being emitted from dry craters.
Earlier, the steam which condenses in the atmosphere retracted sour volcanic chemicals, including fluorine, Óskarsson explained.
Now there are 850 milligrams of fluorine in every kilo of ash. That is approximately 60 percent of the fluorine level found in the most polluted ash emitted during Hekla eruptions.
Óskarsson said the fluorine is mainly hazardous for animals. However, it is washed away during rainfall and rendered harmless within a short period time.
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