
There are few sights in nature as impressive as a fiery volcanic eruption. GlacierHub has featured many photos and stories from Iceland’s recent volcanic eruptions, and another useful way of understanding some of the more intangible aspects of volcanoes is through data visualization.

One of the hot spots (if you’ll excuse the pun) in Iceland is the Bárðarbunga volcano near the center of the country. Each day, the Icelandic Met Office updates the aviation warning color for all of Iceland’s volcanoes. Green means everything is normal, red means an eruption is immanent and air travel must be grounded. Bárðarbunga has been “forever orange” for weeks now, even as other eruptions have come and gone. The gif shows the daily warning progression of Bárðarbunga and you can see just how the volcano has been at “heightened or escalating unrest with increased potential of eruption.”
There are more concrete ways to visualize the eruption. We’ve posted a picture to our Twitter feed comparing the lava height to the Statue of Liberty. The University of Iceland overlayed a lava flow onto a map of the area. There are plenty of GPS data maps out there. Iceland Magazine helpfully related the lava flow to Manhattanites by showing it covers an area three times the size of Central Park.
How about that? New #Holuhraun lava is now 3 times larger than NYC’s Central Park! http://t.co/lDzgBHdyrC pic.twitter.com/VzFX1klhsR
— Iceland Magazine (@IcelandMag) September 3, 2014

Map overlays, size comparisons and seismic graphs are all well and good, but what if you’re a budding volcanologist? Elska is an Icelandic pop singer who makes music for children and families. In late August, she posted a cartoon drawing explaining the eruption to children, which included, among other things, anthropomorphized magma moving closer to the surface and a handy pronunciation of Bárðarbunga (hint: say baur-thar-boun-ga).
Graphic with the earthquakes in the #Bardarbunga area #Iceland Something is moving under the #glacier pic.twitter.com/cVVODOIpyj — Roberto Lopez (@Bromotengger) September 9, 2014
We’ll post more graphical representations of the Iceland eruptions to our Twitter feed, @GlacierHub, as we find them.
Another big #earthquake 5.1 magnitude under the #Bardarbunga area #Iceland pic.twitter.com/RgVgHnQCDH
— Roberto Lopez (@Bromotengger) August 31, 2014
#Bardarbunga caldera has subsided by allmost a meter per day for the last three days http://t.co/A69qoiBZau pic.twitter.com/docspGuYaW — Univ. of Iceland (@uni_iceland) September 8, 2014
130 meter Iceland lava fountains , Statue of Liberty to scale. Calmer Nordic glaciers http://t.co/NQSpxNRIFE pic.twitter.com/615z3qajFy — GlacierHub (@GlacierHub) September 4, 2014