Water/magma mass fractions in phreatomagmatic eruption plumes - constraints from the Grímsvötn 2011 eruption

Explosive interaction of magma and water leads to vaporization and introduces external water vapor to volcanic plumes. Theoretical considerations on the effect of external water magma ratio on volcanic plumes indicate that plume buoyancy should be enhanced by external water fractions up to at least 30%, while fractions reaching 40% should lead to plume collapse. The basaltic VEI 4 eruption of Grímsvötn in May 2011 produced a 15-20 km high eruption plume and over 100 km wide umbrella cloud. External water interacted with the magma and entered the plume from the melting out of a 100-150 m deep ice cauldron that had acquired a volume of 0.1 km3 at the end of the eruption. About 0.7 km3 of tephra was produced in the eruption whereof about half was erupted in phreatomagmatic phases and the other half in magmatic phases. During the dry, magmatic phases melting was apparently not fast enough to supply sufficient external water to the vents to control the style of activity. The only source of external water was the melting out of the ice cauldron since no changes took place in the level of the larger, subglacial lake in the center of the Grímsvötn caldera, and no meltwater was drained from the caldera. The eruption site therefore had little or no hydrological connection with the adjacent subglacial lake. Water remaining at the eruption site at the end of the eruption was miniscule compared to the amount of ice melted. Hence, most of the meltwater was vaporized and carried away as a part of the eruption plume. About one third of the thermal energy of the magma erupted was used to melt, heat up and vaporize water. A large part of this water was released from the plume through condensation and re-freezing, manifested in hail-rich tephra deposited out to several kilometers from the vent. The data indicate that the external water/tephra mass ratio in the phreatomagmatic phases was 20-25%, but similar to 5% for the predominantly magmatic phases.