Fagradalsfjall volcano in southwestern Iceland
Today’s Image of the Day from NASA Earth Observatory features a rare view of an eruption at Fagradalsfjall volcano in southwestern Iceland.
Red lava can be seen pouring from one of the vent systems. According to NASA, brown areas indicate where cooling lava has piled up and spread across valley floors.
On May 12, the Icelandic Met Office reported that the vents associated with the Fagradalsfjall eruption have spilled nearly 30 million cubic meters of lava since the start of the eruption in late March. Fagradalsfjall volcano in southwestern Iceland. North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be described as the northern subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 16.5% of the Earth’s land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The image was captured on May 9, 2021 by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8.
Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory
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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer
