Two magnitude 3,9 earthquakes in Bárðarbunga volcano

Today (21-November-2017) at 13:53 and 13:55 UTC two magnitude 3,9 earthquakes happened in Bárðarbunga volcano. This earthquake activity was in the regular area in the north-east part of the Báðarbunga volcano caldera. It remains to be seen if there is any change in conductivity in Jökulsá á Fjöllum following this earthquake swarm.


Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano today (green stars, red dots). Öræfajökull volcano is quiet today (maybe due to extremely bad weather in this part of Iceland at the moment). Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

The aftershocks form a interesting line that goes east to west in the caldera. I’ve not seen that form before and it’s interesting to see it. I don’t know yet if it means anything besides a possible fault in the volcano. It takes the glacier water 9 hours to reach the monitoring station at Jökulsá á Fjöllum, Grímsstaðir from the one at Upptyppingar. I don’t know how long it takes the water to reach Upptyppingar from the glacier, it is at least several hours.

Please note that with current high activity I’m getting a bit stressed out with the workload when a lot of things are happening in short period of time.

Current list of unrest volcanoes is this.

Bárðarbunga (continued in September 2015 after the August 2014 – February 2015 eruption)
Öræfajökull
Katla
Askja (deep magma activity, not a major concern at the moment)

Other volcanoes are not a concern until they erupt without warning.

9 Replies to “Two magnitude 3,9 earthquakes in Bárðarbunga volcano”

  1. I cant find any hydro that is working for that area, can you give me a link to one not broken or out of date? Thank you

  2. I’m sure there will be a lot to write about when it happens, Jòn. No need for articles about volcanoes elsewhere in the world I would say.

  3. Conductivity in Múlakvísl has been rising steadily since midnight, now over 750. Surely something to be concerned about and in need of explanation?

  4. Common swarm at Herdubreid of about 40 EQ’s. There have been several swarms at that location, some over 200 quakes, Jon wrote about it from 2012 on.

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