Glacial lake · Iceland
Jökulsárlón
Glacial lake
- Area
- 17.5km²
- Max depth
- 260m
- Average depth
- 2.8m
- Elevation
- 13m a.s.l.
- Shoreline
- 28km
- Volume
- 0.049km³
Jökulsárlón is a glacial lake in Iceland. It covers 17.5 km². On average it is 2.8 m deep, and 260 m at its deepest point. Its surface lies 13 m above sea level.
Plan your visit
Stay, sail and get there
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The water
How warm is Jökulsárlón?
The water is warmest in June, around 5 °C at the surface, and coldest in January, around 0 °C. Even at its warmest, the surface stays below 17 °C on average: this is cold water.
The lake usually freezes over for about 158 days a year, from around 1 November to 7 April.
On the shore, afternoons reach 9 °C on average in August and 1 °C in February. The driest month is June (92 mm of rain), the wettest January (284 mm).
Average surface temperature measured by the Landsat 8 satellite between 2013 and 2021 at the point furthest from the shore (106 readings). Shallow bays and beaches are often warmer.
From above
The whole lake from space
Month by month
The year at the lake, month by month
Not a forecast: these are averages over many years. Water is the 2013–2021 average; air, rain, sun and wind are the 1991–2020 average.
Water: 2013–2021 averageClimate: 1991–2020 average
| Month | Water°C | Water high°C | Air high°C | Air low°C | Rainmm | Rainy daysdays | Sunh/day | Windkm/h |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | Ice | — | 2 | -2 | 284 | 24 | 1.1 | 33 |
| February | Ice | — | 1 | -2 | 262 | 21 | 3.6 | 33 |
| March | Ice | — | 2 | -2 | 222 | 22 | 7.8 | 31 |
| April | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 175 | 19 | 12.0 | 27 |
| May | 3 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 108 | 16 | 14.4 | 23 |
| June | 5 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 92 | 14 | 13.8 | 19 |
| July | 5 | 5 | 9 | 7 | 115 | 18 | 11.1 | 18 |
| August | 4 | 4 | 9 | 7 | 146 | 18 | 9.3 | 19 |
| September | 2 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 220 | 20 | 6.2 | 25 |
| October | 1 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 251 | 21 | 4.3 | 28 |
| November | Ice | — | 3 | 0 | 230 | 21 | 1.9 | 31 |
| December | Ice | — | 2 | -2 | 271 | 23 | 0.7 | 32 |
Water: LakeTEMP (Landsat 8, 2013–2021). Air, rain, sun and wind: NASA POWER, 1991–2020 averages. A rainy day has at least 1 mm of rain. Sunshine hours are derived from measured solar radiation.
Size & depth
How big, how deep
- On average, water stays in the lake for about 22 months before flowing out.
- Its catchment drains 10 km² of land.
- About 0.9 m³ of water flow out every second, on average.
Around the shore
What's around Jökulsárlón
Counted within 1.5 km of the shoreline in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit.
- 3beaches and swimming spots
Breiðamerkursandur, Vestri-Fellsfjara, Eystri-Fellsfjara
- —campsites
- —boat hire and water-sport clubs
- —marinas and slipways
- —ferry piers
- 2viewpoints
Jökulsárlón
- —hotels, B&Bs and chalets
- —fishing spots
- 1restaurants and cafés
Nearest airport with scheduled flights: Hornafjörður Airport (HFN), 54 km in a straight line.
Car hire at HFN airport (Höfn)Discover Cars · Affiliate linkOpenStreetMap is built by volunteers: when a number is low, it may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.
Recent years
How each month compared
Afternoon high on the shore. The first row is the reference, the 1991–2020 average in °C; the years below show the difference from it: warmer in orange, cooler in blue.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991–2020 average | 1.5 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 3.0 | 4.7 | 7.3 | 8.7 | 8.7 | 7.1 | 4.5 | 2.6 | 1.6 |
| 2020 | −0.1 | −0.6 | −0.6 | ±0.0 | +0.1 | +0.2 | −0.1 | ±0.0 | −0.5 | +0.2 | ±0.0 | −0.8 |
| 2021 | −1.8 | +0.6 | +0.9 | −0.7 | −2.2 | −0.8 | +0.5 | +1.1 | +0.3 | +0.2 | −0.2 | −0.1 |
| 2022 | +0.4 | −2.2 | +1.3 | +0.6 | +1.0 | +0.4 | ±0.0 | −0.3 | +0.6 | +0.1 | +1.9 | −3.9 |
| 2023 | −1.1 | +1.0 | −3.6 | +0.4 | +1.0 | +1.2 | −0.4 | +0.4 | ±0.0 | −0.1 | +0.5 | −1.4 |
| 2024 | −0.9 | −1.1 | −0.1 | −1.0 | +1.3 | −0.4 | +0.1 | −0.6 | −1.1 | −0.8 | −0.4 | −1.1 |
| 2025 | −1.3 | +2.0 | +1.2 | +1.1 | +2.9 | −0.2 | +1.2 | +0.8 | +0.7 | ±0.0 | −1.3 | +1.8 |
+1 warmer than usual −1 cooler than usual
About these numbers
| Outline, area, depth, volume | HydroLAKES v1.0 (Messager et al. 2016) · CC BY 4.0 |
|---|---|
| Water temperature and ice | LakeTEMP v1 (Korver et al. 2024), Landsat 8 2013–2021 · CC BY 4.0 |
| Air, rain, sun, wind | NASA POWER, 1991–2020 · public domain |
| Names and description | Wikidata (Q511933) · CC0 |
| Around the shore | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
Every figure is an average or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.
