Category: Webicorders

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Changes to my geophone network next year

I have made the following decision on the future of my geophone network that I am currently running in Iceland. Next year (2016) I am going to do the following changes to it.

  • Böðvarshólar geophone station is going to be closed down in 2016 (late that year). It has been on-line since 2012 (3 years). There are also changes coming to the place where the geophone is hosted, so I don’t think that I can have it anyway longer then until 2017 or 2018 because of that. There already have changes happened creating problems for me, but since I am at the location I have managed to fix it temporary.
  • Heklubyggð geophone station is going to remain on-line for the time being. How long that is going to last I do not know. Since it depends on the owner where the geophone is hosted. I hope it is going to be on-line for few more years. It has been on-line since 2008 (7 years).
  • I have cancelled the setting up of new geophone station in Hvammstangi. I was unable to find good location and the cost of starting it would be high and it would only be on-line for a short period of time.
  • There is going to be a geophone in Hvammstangi for the time I am going to be living there (until 2017 or 2018, maybe shorter time period if I am lucky). That geophone is the one I have at home.

Cost of running a 3G internet connection has also been going up in the past few years in Iceland and I am expecting that to continue. Along with the difficulty that I have to deal with problems if a geophone station fails for any reasons, that being a software or hardware. It was also clear from the start when I started this project that I would not be able to continue it forever. I simply do not have the resources to do so or the time. The direction of my live has also been changing in past few years and I found my place in Denmark (this is Padborg) and I plan on living there for good once I move to Denmark in the year 2017 or 2018 (hopefully sooner). I made the decision on moving to Denmark in the year 2007. I was not sure in the beginning where to stay for good, that issue has now been resolved.

I won’t stop recording earthquakes even if I move to Denmark. It is just going to be different since Denmark doesn’t have a lot of earthquakes (1 – 3 earthquakes a year during a busy year). I plan on focusing on detecting distant earthquakes around the world in Denmark. I plan on buying Volksmeter one day (two channel costs $2000 / 1.841,83€) to record distant earthquakes in Denmark.

Permanently closed down websites

Please note that I have closed down the following websites permanently.

Europe geology

Canary Island geology

Falkland Island geology

The websites are going to stay up for some time until I delete them. I don’t plan on bringing them back since there was never high traffic on this websites even if something was going on in the areas they covered (Europe, Canary Islands and Falkland Islands).

Possibility of a new website

I am currently considering opening up a new website covering large earthquakes around world. I haven’t made up my mind yet. If I open up that website it is going to be on its own domain and not a sub-website of jonfr.com as this website currently is. I don’t know what the interest level is for a such website is yet. There are many websites that cover large earthquakes already on the internet. This website would be English only if I start it.

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Updates to PayPal buttons and new geophone

I don’t want to add long none-volcanic articles to this website. I did not want to do so due to length and the subject in question, so I did write it on my website called “Jón Frímann bloggar” and it can be found here. Please read it if you can.

New geophone going to be added

I plan on adding a new geophone to Hvammstangi soon. I don’t have exact date yet. This just using current hardware that I have to set-up this new station. I did get a computer to do this. It is just missing the hard drive and needs more ram and some version of Windows (maybe Win 8.1). I am looking into that cost, but at the moment I can’t afford it. This means that while I am going to be living in Hvammstangi there are going to be two geophones active in that area, once I get the other one up and running, allowing for higher resolution of any earthquakes that might take place in nearby area. I always have a geophone with me where I live to record earthquakes. Updates to webicorders website are going to uploaded soon, once I have finished working and updating it.

PayPal buttons and donations

Please remember to support my work with donations or by buying from Amazon if you can. If you can’t, don’t worry about it. I know that not all of the people who read this website can afford supporting my work and that is good too. I have now updated the donations button to my Danish Paypal account, the text once the button is clicked should be in English. If people want to donate more then 500€ please do so directly with your bank, since PayPal might not allow that high amount go trough my account at present time, since my Danish PayPal account is new and lacks one verification at current time. Information on how to donate directly with your bank information can be found here. Thanks for the support.

Article updated at 03:33 UTC on 12-April-2015.

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Bárðarbunga volcano update 27-December-2014

Bárðarbunga volcano continues to erupt in Holuhraun as before. The eruption is around the same phase as before. There was some change detected at the eruption vent in Holuhraun, it is remains unclear at the moment what change is.

141227_1825
The earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano for the past 48 hours. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Earthquake activity has dropped for the past few days, with few earthquakes that have been reaching magnitude 3,0 and above. Largest earthquake in the past few days has had the magnitude of 5,0. It is unclear why this is happening at the moment, earthquake activity might pick up again, it also might increase again. There is also a change that end of the eruption in Holuhraun is getting close, at least the phase that is connected to earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano.

Continued earthquake activity in Tungafellsjökull volcano

Earthquake activity continues in Tungafellsjökull volcano. So far the earthquakes that are happening are smaller ones, with rare magnitude 3,0 or larger earthquake taking place every once in a while. At the moment the earthquake activity in Tungafellsjökull volcano is increasing and it is bit unclear why that is. The risk of eruption in Tungafellsjökull volcano appears to remains, even if that would just be a minor eruption. If an eruption takes place in Tungafellsjökull volcano, it would be the first documented eruption in the past 12,000 years to take place (at least).

New years update schedule

Next article about Bárðarbunga volcano eruption are going to be on the following days.

29-December-2014
2-January-2015

After that I am going to return to normal schedule on reporting on Bárðarbunga volcano eruption.

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Bárðarbunga volcano update 1-December-2014

This is going to be a short update on activity in Bárðarbunga volcano.

Observation of the eruption in Holuhraun has been difficult to impossible in the past days due to bad weather in Iceland. The lava field is now larger than 75 km². I don’t know the volume at the moment. The amount of SO2 is I think about the same as before, as for cycles of pulses I don’t know if that is currently ongoing or has stopped. The output of lava is around the same, around 50 – 130 m³/sec far as I know.

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The earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano for the past 48 hours. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Largest earthquake today (01-December-2014) had the magnitude of 5,2 according to Icelandic Met Office. Fewer earthquakes where detected on Sunday due to the bad weather in Iceland. It looks like there has not been any change in earthquake activity for the past 48 hours, it just looks like it on the Icelandic Met Office maps due to the bad weather.

Donations: Please remember to donate or buy stuff from Amazon to support my work here. Thanks.

Comments: Please remember that everyone has a right there own view. I however ask people with some of there less proven ideas to keep them out of this website. If you see flaming or bad behaviour in the comments. Please let me know with a email and I will deal with it. I also remind people to be nice to each other here.

Moving to Iceland: Tomorrow I am going to turn off my earthquake computer and other computers that I now have running. This means that I’m going to switch the backup settings. The geophone computers are going to upload the images to the internet while my main earthquake computer is off-line. I don’t know for how long that is going to be, at least until August when I plan on start back in school. Since I am going to be moving there won’t be any update on Wednesday 3-December-2014 or on 5-December-2014. I am going to try and post short update on 6-December or 7-December-2014 (using the laptop that is falling apart). I will try to approve any comment soon as possible if your comment ends up in the comment moderation for some reason.

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Bárðarbunga volcano update Monday 10-November-2014

No major change took place in the eruption in Holuhraun during the weekend. The lava field is now around 70 square kilometres wide and it keeps growing each day. I don’t know the total volume so far, since that depends on the thickness of the lava. Last calculations that I know of estimated it to be around 1,0 km³, it is save to assume that volume is now greater since the last estimate that I know of is at least one month old by now.

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The earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Largest earthquake this weekend had the magnitude of 5,2. Other earthquakes where smaller, but many magnitude 3,0 and larger earthquakes did happen as usual in Bárðarbunga volcano. The crust in Bárðarbunga volcano is now heavily fractured, this allows heat from the volcano easier way to the surface. This also means new hot springs are going to open up and older ones are going get more active. There is no major change in Bárðarbunga volcano eruption at the moment, as has been the case for most part of past two months.

Article on what is happening in Bárðarbunga volcano

I am working on a article (in my head at the moment) on what is happening inside Bárðarbunga volcano. It is not ready yet, I do hope to have it ready tomorrow if I can process all the data for the article, in order to properly figure out my self what is going on in Bárðarbunga volcano.

My geophone network

I run a geophone network of just two geophones in Iceland at the moment. Once I get an apartment the total number of working geophones is going to be three. I have decided that once I move from Iceland to Azores Islands[1] it is not going to be workable to keep the network running due the technical problems doing so. I am not going to stop recording earthquakes, I am just going to do so in Azores Islands. At the moment I also have four year backlog of earthquakes that I have to properly add time and location data to. That is a lot of earthquakes over this period, since large events have happened and Bárðarbunga alone added up to 2000 earthquakes to my earthquake database in August and now I add around 10 – 20 earthquakes from Bárðarbunga volcano each day (this is just average). The geophone network as it now stands is going to be running for the next 5 – 10 years while I live in Iceland, after that I am going to relocate it to Flores Island when I move there[2]. At the moment I don’t know for sure when that is going to happen, all I know now is that it is going to happen.

1: I am currently living in Denmark. I move next month to Iceland.
2: I plan up to ten years ahead so that I know what I need to do and know before I do it.

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Bárðarbunga volcano update for Wednesday 29-October-2014

Today (29-October-2014) marks the two months since the second eruption in Holuhraun started. Currently the eruption is ongoing with no signs of stopping, it is erupting about the same power since Monday, the eruption power is less than it was when it started two months ago and that is normal. The lava field has now covers area of 64,6 square kilometres in size. This is now largest lava in Iceland since Laki eruption of 1783 – 1784.

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano for the past 48 hours. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Earthquake activity remains strong in Bárðarbunga volcano. There is one to two magnitude five or stronger earthquake every 20 – 35 hours at present time. The caldera continues to drop around 40cm/day, most of the drop happens without any earthquake activity at all. So far no major eruption has happened under the glacier, only minor eruptions have happened that have only lasted for few hours.

I also want to point out there is only basalt lava in this eruption. This magma is up to 1600C warm when it comes up from its deep source at +20km depth. If there was any other type of magma in this eruption it would have been detected by now in the current eruption in Holuhraun. Most of Iceland eruptions are basalt only eruption, since Iceland is both on hotspot and the mid-Atlantic ridge. There are other melts and types of eruptions, but such eruptions don’t happen as frequently as normal basalt eruptions. The reason for ash cloud eruptions in volcano like Grímsfjall is due the fact that there is a glacier on top of the volcano. Same rule applies to Katla volcano, it is all basalt most of the time, but since there is a lot of glacier on top of the volcano the eruptions that happen are explosive due to that fact.

I don’t think there is anything else new about the eruption and activity in Bárðarbunga volcano since Monday.

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Bárðarbunga volcano daily update for 23-October-2014

Currently earthquake activity is increasing in Bárðarbunga volcano. For the past 48 hours 53 (when this article is written) earthquake with magnitude above 3,0 have happened. It is unclear what is going now in Bárðarbunga volcano, at the moment most of the earthquake activity is located in north-east of the caldera rim. I am unsure why earthquake activity is increasing the way it is currently doing.

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano for the past 48 hours. Green stars show earthquakes with magnitude above 3,0. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

I am not sure if there have been any harmonic tremor this time around in Bárðarbunga volcano. That might well be without me noticing them. Even if the eruption in Holuhraun stops it is clear that Bárðarbunga is far from being a stable or in dormant state. A new eruption vent is more likely to open up then not. That might happen under a glacier and that is going to mean glacier flood and volcano ash eruption while water gets into the crater. This has not yet happened on large scale in Bárðarbunga. There is also no eruption taking place in the caldera at the moment and the glacier is getting thicker this time of the year due to fresh snowfall on top of it and making it heavier at the same time. Far as I know the eruption in Holuhraun is at the same pace as it was yesterday. I didn’t see anything on the web-cameras due to weather when I checked them earlier.

If anything major happens I am going to post update here soon as possible.

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Bárðarbunga volcano daily update for 22-October-2014

Donations: Please remember to support my work with donations or by using Amazon to buy stuff or streaming service from them. Thanks for the support. 🙂

Bárðarbunga volcano eruption in Holuhraun has not changed much from yesterday. Latest news however say that the eruption in Holuhraun is slowly coming to an end. When that might happen is not known, there is less lava flow today then two weeks ago. Activity in Bárðarbunga volcano is far from over and I am expecting new eruption starting at any time with no warning at all. There is also no major change in the GPS data as can be seen here.

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Earthquake activity today in Bárðarbunga volcano. Green stars show earthquakes with magnitude above 3,0. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

There is no longer any point for me to mention the largest earthquakes today. Since there happen magnitude 3,0 – 4,9 earthquake every one to three hours at the moment and earthquakes with magnitude above 5,0 every 20 – 30 hours. People wanting to check magnitude details can do so on Icelandic Met Office website here. Any large earthquake also appear clearly on my geophones, the website for those can be viewed here. Other then this I don’t have any new news about what is happening in Bárðarbunga volcano. The day to day changes are not great as I have mentioned earlier.

Update 1: Rúv News has published a news about new estimate from Icelandic Met Office if an eruption happens in Dyngjujökull or in the river area of Jökulsá á Fjöllum. New estimates are that 25,000 cubic meters per second of water are going to flood down Jökulsá á Fjöllum in such eruption and are going to reach Holuhraun eruption and lava field in about 30 minutes. The news can be viewed here with graphics, both language and text is in Icelandic.

Icelandic News about Bárðarbunga volcano

„Þetta hætt­ir einn góðan veður­dag“ (mbl.is)

Other: Due the fact that the eruption in Holuhraun and activity in Bárðarbunga volcano is almost the same now between days I am going to write fewer articles about the activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. The reason is that I want to get a little rest before the next chapter in Bárðarbunga volcano activity starts and I find it is difficult to report always the same thing almost every day. I am going to keep the daily update format until Friday and from Monday I am doing to update every other day, this means there is going to be update on Monday, then on Wednesday and on Friday. Unless something major happens then I am going to update soon as I can do so.

Article updated at 21:48 UTC.
Article updated at 22:57 UTC.

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Bárðarbunga daily update for 7-October-2014

This is the daily update for Bárðarbunga volcano on 6-October-2014.

I’m sorry for this late update. I’ve been more busy today then I planned. I did manage to solve one network problem that I was having. The other network problem that I am having is out of my reach it seems (It’s a problem with the ISP network connection to my end I think).

Status of Bárðarbunga volcano on 7-October-2014

  • The largest earthquake today had the magnitude of 5,5. It took place at 10:22 UTC. Other earthquakes that happened today where smaller. It seems that around 5 – 20 earthquakes that are larger then magnitude 3,0 happen every day now in Bárðarbunga volcano. This has been going on now for almost two months.
  • The eruption in Holuhraun continues far as I know. I am not sure on how large the lava field is today. Visibility has been poor to none today due to weather in this area at the moment.
  • Tourists are continuing to trying to kill them self by getting close to the eruption site. The newest case involves a millionaire (or billionaire?) from Kazakhstan that landed close the lava field. They where lucky that wind did not change direction while they where there. The amount of SO2 close to the eruption has been recorded going up to 130.000 μg/m³. That is good enough to kill instantly and melt people lungs (read up on that can be found here).  News item on this stunt can be found here.
  • I suspect that activity in the south part of Bárðarbunga volcano system is about to start. When it is going to start full force is impossible to know for sure.
  • It is a question of Tungnafellsjökull volcano is getting unstable due the unrest in Bárðarbunga volcano. It appears to be in the same rift area, even if it is in a different volcano.
  • Skrokkalda volcano appears to be stable for now (No GVP profile). This is important since Tungafellsjökull volcano fissure swarm extents into it and it is next to Bárðarbunga volcano fissure swarm. This volcano has no information on-line about it, besides what I have written about it. It is an active volcano, but has been dormant for a long time. Some hydrothermal activity might happen in it on the surface.
  • I don’t know how the status is on Hamarinn volcano (Loki-Fögrufjöll). I am however assuming that volcano to be unstable. It last erupted in July-2011 with a minor eruption that lasted some 8 to 10 hours in total. Eruptions in Hamarinn volcano happens without warning and without any earthquake activity, at least not high amount of earthquake activity far as I can tell.

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Activity today in Bárðarbunga volcano and the 45 km long dyke. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

hkbz.svd.23.46.utc.on.07.10.2014
This is how the earthquake did appear on my geophone in Heklubyggð. The website for my geophones can be found here. This image is released under Creative Commons Licence. Please see CC Licence for more details.

If anything more happens I am going to add information about it here.

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Bárðarbunga volcano daily update 30-September-2014

This information is going to change quickly if anything happens in Bárðarbunga volcano.

Current status in Bárðarbunga volcano at 21:49 UTC

  • There is no signs of the eruption in Holuhraun is about to end. Currently there are only one or two craters erupting.
  • The lava field is now around 47 square kilometre wide. It grows in wideness at the moment, it is not getting any longer since the magma has not the energy to go any future than it already has.
  • Earthquake activity continues to happen under the dyke and the eruption crater. So there is clearly high pressure in the dyke and not it is possible that the eruption that is now taking place is not large enough for the all the magma that is down in the dyke.
  • Largest earthquake today had the magnitude of 4,8 and took place at 19:24 UTC. Second largest earthquake took place at 14:53 UTC and had the magnitude of 4,7.
  • The lava that has now erupted in Holuhraun is two times larger than all of lava erupted in Kröflueldar eruptions that took place between 1974 – 1984.
  • Bárðarbunga volcano caldera has now dropped some 30 meters according to Magnus Tumi Guðmundsson geologists at University of Iceland. There is a plan to fly over Bárðarbunga volcano by end of this week, when maintain of the air plain that is being used for this is done.
  • Icelandic Met Office has confirmed that it is just lava flowing into Jökulsá á Fjöllum glacier river. This is not a new fissure at that location this time around.
  • Rifting in Bárðarbunga volcano area is about what Iceland moves in about 150 year period. This is happening all at once and it does not appear to be over.
  • Bad weather has prevented scientists  from being in the area most of the week. The weather is not expect to improve until 2-October-2014, since new storm is expected tomorrow.

One month ago at Holuhraun

This is the news one month ago (almost to the day) about what is happening back then.

An eruption possible in Holuhraun lava (28-August-2014. Rúv.is)
Fissure eruption in Holuhraun lava field (29-August-2014. Rúv.is)
Holuhraun eruption lasted 3-4 hours (29-August-2014. Rúv.is)

Tomorrow (1-October-2014) it is exactly one month since this happened.

Fresh eruption north of Bardarbunga -video (31-August-2014. Rúv.is)
Fresh eruption: 60 m high lava fountains (31-August-2014. Rúv.is)

How strong wind affects earthquake recoding

Here is a image from my geophone of how strong wind in north Atlantic ocean and Greenland sea affects my geophone recording and other seismometers in Iceland.

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Here is how you read this image. First is the earthquake, the P wave is first, second is S wave, along with other wave forms that happen in earthquake. The wave patterns that is all over this earthquake recording is ocean wave from winds. Both the ocean waves that happen at the coast, but also the ocean waves at deep ocean far from Iceland coast line. The spike at 21:07:21 – 21:07:41 is a electric noise. The noise at 21:08:41 – 21:09:21 is an animal or some other type of noise source. This image is released under Creative Commons Licence. Please see CC Licence page for more details.

Article updated at 21:51 UTC.