There have been about 10 million views of the YouTube RÚV stream of the eruption in Geldingadalur.
About 20 foreign news media report from the stream, in addition to which a number of foreign universities have requested recordings of the material for research for scientific purposes.
Technical difficulties
The weather is really bad at the eruption and the stream is currently down due to it losing connection.
Bragi Reynisson, head of technical affairs at RÚV, has stated that it is a definitive achievement to operate a camera on the mountain with batteries alone.
“There are many people watching and the recording is distributed on about 20 news media around the world and our YouTube stream has been watched over ten million times,” says Bragi.
Darn kids ruining the stream
After the webcam was set up, you could often see people standing in front of the camera and waving at it. Bragi says that the number of people who do it has decreased and they try to do as little as possible.
He says that it is important that the broadcast is not disturbed too much because it is also used for scientific purposes.
All material is recorded and sent to both the Meteorological Office and the University of Iceland.
Bragi said “This will be used in the coming years and there are more universities around the world that have shown interest in the material and will receive a copy of it to work with for scientific purposes.”
Bragi thinks it is remarkable that the eruption has been monitored since 12 hours after the initial eruption.
He concludes by stating that “We have historical data from this eruption.”
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