Fracturing and tectonic stress drive ultrarapid magma flow into dikes.

Many examples of exposed giant dike swarms can be found where lateral magma flow has exceeded hundreds of kilometers. We show that massive magma flow into dikes can be established with only modest overpressure in a magma body if a large enough pathway opens at its boundary and gradual buildup of high tensile stress has occurred along the dike pathway prior to the onset of diking. This explains rapid initial magma flow rates, modeled up to about 7400 cubic meters per second into a dike ~15-kilometers long, which propagated under the town of Grindavík, Southwest Iceland, in November 2023. Such high flow rates provide insight into the formation of major dikes and imply a serious hazard potential for high-flow rate intrusions that propagate to the surface and transition into eruptions.

Volcanic unrest as seen from the magmatic source: Reyðarártindur pluton, Iceland.

How the Earth's crust accommodates magma emplacement influences the signals that can be detected by monitoring volcano seismicity and surface deformation, which are routinely used to forecast volcanic eruptions. However, we lack direct observational links between deformation caused by magma emplacement and monitoring signals. Here we use field mapping and photogrammetry to quantify deformation caused by the emplacement of at least 2.5 km3 of silicic magma in the Reyðarártindur pluton, Southeast Iceland. Our results show that magma emplacement triggered minor and local roof uplift, and that magma reservoir growth was largely aseismic by piecemeal floor subsidence. The occurrence and arrangement of fractures and faults in the reservoir roof can be explained by magmatic overpressure, suggesting that magma influx was not fully accommodated by floor subsidence. The tensile and shear fracturing would have caused detectable seismicity. Overpressure eventually culminated in eruption, as evidenced by exposed conduits that are associated with pronounced local subsidence of the roof rocks, corresponding to the formation of an asymmetric graben at the volcano surface. Hence, the field observations highlight processes that may take place within silicic volcanoes, not accounted for in widely used models to interpret volcanic unrest.