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A new aviation alert was issued by Iceland yesterday after a fresh lava eruption from a fissure near the Bárðarbunga volcano, but the warning was later lowered.
Iceland’s Met Office said there had been “a very calm lava eruption … hardly seen on seismometers”.
Aircraft were banned from flying within 6,000 ft of the volcano peak until the red alert changed to orange.
Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in 2010, producing ash that disrupted air travel across Europe.
Sunday’s eruption in the Holuhraun lava field area was “calm but continuous”, authorities said.
It happened in roughly the same place as an earlier eruption on Friday morning, and is the third to happen in the area in the last week, the BBC reported.
The latest eruption was more intense than Friday’s with around 10 times more lava said Armann Hoskuldssonk, a geologist from the University of Iceland.
But the Met Office later said: “No ash has been detected. The aviation colour code for Bardarbunga has therefore been re-set to orange.”
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said a number of the roads leading in to the area have been closed and police evacuated the area immediately to the north of Vatnajökull following Friday’s small volcanic eruption.
“High levels of seismic activity continue in the area around Bárðarbunga volcano in Vatnajökull glacier in the east of Iceland,” the FCO said.