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This article was hard not because I couldn’t figure out the Icelandic but because I didn’t understand what they were talking about 🙂 I never really studied geology, which is unfortunate, since Iceland would be a geologist’s dream, so I didn’t understand why they were measuring the conductivity of the water. As it turns out, this is one of the measurements that helps predict volcanic activity, which melts glaciers, which causes rivers and streams to flood, which brings us to the article in question 🙂
Aukin rafleiðni en ekki útlit fyrir hlaup
Increased conductivity but no flood imminent
Rafleiðni í Múlakvísl hefur aukist stöðugt síðustu viku, samkvæmt mælum Veðurstofunnar. Ekkert bendir þó enn til að hlaup sé að verða í kvíslinni, að sögn Gunnars Sigurðssonar, vatnamælingamanns hjá Veðurstofu Íslands.
Conductivity in Múlakvísl has steadily increased in the past week, according to Meteorological Office measurements. There is no indication however that a flood is imminent at the stream according to Gunnar Sigurðsson, hydrographer at the Icelandic Meteorological Office.
A kvísl is a small lake or river, a stream or a branch off of a larger river. It made me think of a another word, hvísl (whisper), which looks very similar, but the two words are nothing alike grammatically 🙂
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The word for a glacial flood, hlaup, is a well-behaved neuter noun. The verb hlaupa, which also means run, is a mean and nasty strong verb, with sharp, bitey vowel shifts:
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Gunnar segir að væntanlega sé vatn að leka úr einhverjum katli undir Kötlujökli. Jarðhitasvæði sé undir jöklinum, þar sem ísinn bráðni og vatnið safnist saman. „Síðan skilar vatnið sér fram í ána, annað hvort gerist það rólega eins og núna eða með látum eins og í hlaupinu 2011. Núna virðist þetta gerast mjög rólega,“ segir Gunnar. „Það er stöðugt rennsli af jarðhitavatni. Leiðnin sýnir það. Ef þetta er verulegt magn af jarðhitavatni, sést órói á jarðskjálftamælum. En það eru engin merki um það núna,“ svarar Gunnar spurningu um hvort það séu líkur á hlaupi. „Það er enginn titringur í jöklinum vegna vatnsrennslis. Og þetta hefur gerst áður. Það gerðist vorið 2012, en þá fjaraði það út af sjálfsdáðum. Það kom ekkert raunverulegt hlaup.“
Gunnar says that there is probably water leaking from some basin under the Katla glacier. There would be a geothermal area under the glacier where ice melts and water collects. “Then the water makes its way into the river, either slowly like now or violently like in the 2011 flood. Right now it appears to be happening very slowly,” says Gunnar. “There is a constant flow of geothermal water. The conductivity indicates this. If this is a considerable amount of geothermal water, you see a disturbance on the seismograph. There is no sign of this right now,” Gunnar responded to a question as to whether a flood was probable. “There are no tremors in the glacier due to water flow. And this has happened before. It happened in the spring of 2012, but it died out on its own. No real flood came.”
There’s a lot of subjunctive going on at the beginning of the paragraph, I imagine because of væntanlega and the implied uncertainty or assumption. So the words sé, bráðni and safnist are all subjunctive verb forms.
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I knew that the rivers were monitored but never really knew why, or what they were looking for exactly. So not only did I learn a bit more Icelandic, I learned a little about geology 🙂
rafleiðni f conductivity (electrical) hlaup n flood in a glacial river stöðugt adv constantly, permanently, always kvísl f branch vatna·mælingar f pl hydrography jarðhita·svæði n geothermal area ó·rói m disturbance jarðskjálfta·mælir m seismograph titringur m quaking, shivering vatns·rennsli n watercourse, water flow fjara v ebb gera e-ð af sjálfsdáðum do sth of one's own accord raun·verulegur adj real