Author: Jón Frímann

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Possible volcano eruption in the year 2002 off the coast of north Iceland

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Few years ago there was an strong earthquake swarm 45 km north of Grímsey island, the earthquake swarm location was between Grímsey island and Kolbeinsey island. The strongest earthquake in that swarm had the magnitude of 5,5. It’s now considered a possibility that an minor eruption took place at this location when this earthquake swarm took place in the year 2002. This is according to an recent study into the volcano activity in this area. Since this part of the rift zone where volcanic activity continues where the Tjörnes Fracture Zone ends.

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Storagrunn volcano. Image from Vísir.is news, copyright belongs to Bryndís Brandsdóttir and other people connected to this work.

This volcano is located at depth at this location so any minor eruption is not going to get noticed on the surface of the ocean.

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The earthquake swarm in this area in the year 2002 (vedur.is, Icelandic, images). Earthquakes larger than 3,0 are marked by green dots. Copyright on this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

Icelandic News about this. Beware Google Translate.

Við misstum af síðasta eldgosi við Norðurland (Vísir.is, Icelandic)

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New volcanoes found 900 km south of Iceland

In an recent study mission on Reykjanes ridge they did discover new volcanoes. What was discovered is that there appears to be more earthquake activity outside the main rift zone than originally thought. They also found volcanoes that are up to 2000 meters high (from the ocean floor) and have some other oddities too. At this south part of Reykjanes ridge there is an fault zone at the south end of it. According to the news the Reykjanes ridge is now about to break it soon (in the next few million years) and extend it’s reach more south. This area of the Reykjanes ridge appears to be high in volcano activity, a lot more then previously thought. All of the volcano activity at this location goes unnoticed due to how remote this area is and how deep the ocean is at this location.

I don’t know what this fault zone is named. But I think it’s this one on Google Earth.


View Larger Map

Rúv News in Icelandic. Beware of Google Translate.

Ísland teygir sig lengra suður (Rúv.is)

Blog post updated at 23:41 UTC.

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Earthquake activity continues in Eyjafjallajökull volcano

Minor earthquake activity has continued since last week in Eyjafjallajökull volcano. This earthquake activity is so small that none of the earthquake have had the magnitude of 1,0. This earthquake activity is also shallow, less than 5 km depth. So it’s clearly not magma (at least not new one) that is creating this activity. I am not sure what is creating this activity in Eyjafjallajökull volcano at this point and I might never know.

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Minor earthquake activity in Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

At current time there is no risk for an eruption from Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Since there is no new magma flowing into the volcano at present time. If you want to watch Eyjafjallajökull volcano you can do so here (jonfr.com) and here (mila.is) web cameras.

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Earthquake swarm on Tjörnes Fracture Zone

On 14-October-2013 (Monday) an earthquake swarm started in Tjörnes Fracture Zone. This earthquake swarm has so far just been a minor one, with the largest earthquake being magnitude 2,5. The earthquake swarm appears to be currently ongoing.

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Earthquake swarm in the Tjörnes Fracture Zone. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

It’s hard to know for sure if this earthquake swarm is going to continue, but this area of TFZ has seen earthquake activity over the past few months. So there is a chance of more earthquake activity in the next days to weeks even months in this area.

Blog post updated at 23:25 UTC on 15-October-2013.

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New earthquake swarm on Reykjanes peninsula and Reykjanes ridge

Today (15-October-2013) at 01:43 UTC a new earthquake swarm started on Reykjanes peninsula and Reykjanes ridge. So far the largest earthquake has the magnitude of 2,5. At the moment no larger earthquakes have taken place. This earthquake swarm is currently ongoing, but the rate of earthquakes has dropped over the day and is currently low.

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The earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes peninsula. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

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The earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes ridge. It’s just off the coast. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This area of the Reykjanes has been seeing a lot of activity in recent days and its possible that more earthquake activity is going to take place at this location in next few days to months.

Blog post updated at 21:42 UTC.

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New bank account for donations

This is the new bank account for donations. If you have been using the other bank account you can continue to do so, it’s still active and can be used without any problem at all (I have no plan to change that).

New bank account:
IBAN: DK3579100001662199
BIC/SWIFT: SYBKDK22

If you want to send donation to me with Paypal you have to send it to my email address (jonfr@8930a1.talbot.shared.1984.is). If you want to donate to me every month you can use the button on this website to do so. Thanks for the support.

Update 1: I no longer have Skrill account since they did terminate it for some reason (unable to change currency or something of that nature). So please do not try to donate using skrill account at this time. It just won’t work since I currently do not have an account with them. I am looking into this situation and I plan on creating new account with skrill soon, but it’s going to be on different email address due to security reasons (at skrill) I cannot use my older email address.

Blog post updated at 15:42 UTC on 15-October-2013.

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Update on the donation/support matters

As can be seen I have added the subscription button from Paypal again to this site. The reason is that some people might not want to register on skrill.com to send me donation, the subscription button is also for people who want to support me every month. This means that I am not going to remove Paypal completely. However I cannot use the donation button as it’s not meant for websites like mine, as Paypal explains here clearly. So if you want to support me, you have to send me donation manually with Paypal to my email address at jonfr@8930a1.talbot.shared.1984.is (it’s spam protected from clear view). Currently I am not ready to use my account at skrill.com, but that is going to be a preferred way to send me donations in the future or by sending them via bank over SWIFT bank system

Support is welcomed this month since I am rather too broke this month and I am not going to see a lot of improvement (ISK is now at 22,77 ISK = 1 DKK at Visa exchange rate in Iceland or €1 = 169,23 ISK) any time soon. So far this month has been rather bad when it comes to money for me. November is also going to be like this I expect and maybe January-2014 too. After that I am not sure how my status is going to be.

Update 1: I am going to add the new bank account to the support website tomorrow.

Thanks for the support.

Blog post updated at 00:49 UTC on 14-October-2013.

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Earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes peninsula

Today at 01:11 UTC (13-October-2013) an earthquake swarm started on the Reykjanes peninsula. Early in this earthquake it was just minor earthquakes until 07:34 UTC an earthquake with magnitude 4,8 took place on the Reykjanes peninsula. Before the strongest earthquake took place, an magnitude 3,4 and 3,5 took place. Several earthquakes with magnitude above 3,0 took place following the main earthquake. The strongest earthquake was felt over an wide area, from Vík í Mýrdal to Hólmavík in north-west Iceland. Far as I know no damage did take place following this earthquake.

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The earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes peninsula. Green stars mark earthquakes with magnitude above 3,0. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This earthquake did appear clearly on all of my geophone stations in Iceland. They can be viewed here.

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The magnitude 4,8 earthquake on the Eyrarbakki geophone station. The earthquake signal is strongest on this geophone station and clearly tops the sensor it self, it can be seen how the signal goes above the maximum line on the geophone image. This image is released under Creative Commons licence. Please see CC Licence page for more details on this licence.

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The magnitude 4,8 earthquake at Heklubyggð geophone station. This image is released under Creative Commons licence. Please see CC Licence page for more details on this licence.

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The magnitude 4,8 earthquake at Böðvarshólar geophone station. This image is released under Creative Commons licence. Please see CC Licence page for more details on this licence.

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The magnitude 4,8 earthquake at Skeiðflöt geophone station. The earthquake did appear clearly even if the noise level is high on that station. This image is released under Creative Commons licence. Please see CC Licence page for more details on this licence.

It is impossible to know for sure if this earthquake swarm is going to increase again. For the past few hours activity has been dropping, there is however nothing that says activity is not going to increase again. Such activity is common in this area, but it’s impossible to know for sure what happens next. At the moment there is nothing to suggest that volcano activity is the source of this activity. That might change but I think it is unlikely to be the case at the moment, regardless of what the future has in store.

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Source of the glacier flood in Hofsjökull volcano found

In August-2013 there was an glacier flood from Hofsjökull volcano, this glacier flood was minor and did not cause any damage. The source of this glacier flood has now been found according to Icelandic Meteorological Office. A new glacier cauldron has been found in Hofsjökull glacier, where none was before. The cauldron is around 700 meters long and about 30 – 50 meters deep. The glacier is cracked a lot around the cauldron and it’s dangerous to travel to this area because of that. The hight of this cauldron is around 1700 meters above sea level.

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Hofsjökull volcano and glacier. The new glacier cauldron is located at ~64°49,5‘N; 18°52‘W. Click on the image for full resolution. Image from NASA/USGS/Icelandic Meteorological Office/Geological Department of University of Iceland (Jarðvísindastofnun Háskólans).

According to Icelandic Meteorological Office this part of the glacier has not had any glacier cauldrons before that they know of. This cauldron has the volume of 1 million cubic meters (106 m3) according to Icelandic Meteorological Office. This area now has highly active hydro-thermal area and hot-springs. What formed this glacier cauldron is unclear at the moment, it was not an eruption since no such signals have been recorded from Hofsjökull volcano before or after the glacier flood in August-2013. It is also unclear if this glacier cauldron is going to create new glacier flood in the future.

Icelandic Meteorological Office announcement

Hlaup úr Hofsjökli í ágúst 2013 (vedur.is, in Icelandic)

Icelandic News

Fundu sigketil á Hofsjökli (mbl.is, Icelandic)

Blog post updated at 21:02 UTC on 11-October-2013.
Blog post updated at 01:45 UTC on 12-October-2013.

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Bank problem

Today (11-October-2013) I found out that Sydbank had closed the account I was going to use for people to support me here. I am not sure why that is, the best explanation I got was that it was not correct account type I was using or something of that nature. I have already got a new account (the correct type) to use.

For that reason if you have sent an donation to me to the provided bank account it is going to be returned to you since that account has been closed. There is nothing I can do about this, it’s out of my control. I do not know if your bank applies any fees if this happens. That is between you and your bank to find out.

Update 1: This account number that I use here (below) is the same one as I told people to use few weeks back. So if you have donated with that bank number before there won’t be any issue at all.

If you want to support me directly you can do so with this account (until the new account is up and running). It’s active and I have no issues with it. If you want to donate with other ways it is still possible to donate with Paypal directly via email (jonfr@8930a1.talbot.shared.1984.is – It is spam protected here). Currently my Skrill account is not ready for use yet, but I am working on it.

IBAN: DK7979100001594574
SWIFT: SYBKDK22

More details can be found here. I am sorry for any inconvenience this might have for people who are trying to support me. I have complained to Sydbank about this and I hope this won’t happen again. Thanks for the support.

Blog post updated at 14:54 UTC on 11-October-2013.
Blog post updated at 15:43 UTC on 11-October-2013.
Blog post updated at 16:08 UTC on 11-October-2013.
Blog post updated at 19:34 UTC on 11-October-2013.