Category: Swarm

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Earthquake activity in south part of Bárðarbunga volcano caldera

Today (24-October-2017) at 14:18 UTC a magnitude 4,1 earthquake took place in south part of the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera. Few moments later at 14:54 UTC a magnitude 3,4 earthquake took place and few other earthquakes followed.


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

What is different now is that the earthquake activity is now happening in south part of the caldera. Close to the area where deep cauldrons have appeared due to shallow magma at this location. This makes the earthquake activity at this highly interesting and possibly highly dangerous if magma has now started to push it’s way up at this location. A small eruption at this location could result in a serious glacier flood, even if such an eruption only lasted for few hours.


The magnitude 4,1 earthquake as it appeared on my geophone in Dellukot. This image is under Creative Commons License, please see CC License for more details.


The magnitude 4,1 earthquake as it appeared on my geophone in Böðvarshólar. This trace has been filtered at 4Hz. This image is under Creative Commons License, please see CC License for more details.

It remains a question if an earthquake is going to happen in north-east part of the Báðarbunga volcano caldera in next few days. That seems to happen when a earthquakes takes place in south part of the caldera. I don’t know why that happens, it is just seems to do.

Article updated at 23:48 UTC. Text fixes.

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Strong earthquake swarm in south Iceland yesterday (20-October-2017) – minor damage reported

Yesterday (20-October-2017) a strong earthquake swarm happened in south Iceland on the SISZ fault zone. This earthquake swarm is currently ongoing and stronger earthquakes cannot be ruled out at this point.


The earthquake swarm as of the writing of this article. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Largest earthquake that has happened so far had the magnitude of 4,1 and four magnitude 2,9 earthquakes have happened at the writing of this article. During the strongest earthquake yesterday some minor damage has been reported, items falling out of shelves and breaking, picture frames getting skewed on walls. For a short time the village of Stokkseyri lost all line phone communication, I don’t know how long that outage lasted but phone service was restored quickly according to the news on Rúv. Largest earthquake was felt over a wide area, all the way to Reykjavík and up to Akranes village and east to Hella village.


The magnitude 4,1 earthquake as it appeared on my geophone in Dellukot. This image is under Creative Commons Licence, please see CC Licence page for more details.


The magnitude 4,1 earthquake as it appeared on my geophone in Böðvarshólar. This image is under Creative Commons Licence, please see CC Licence page for more details.

I don’t know if this earthquake activity signals a new period of earthquake swarm in SISZ. I have listed large history of earthquakes of the SISZ in a article from 2011 here.

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Strong earthquake swarm in Tjörnes Fracture Zone this morning (19-October-2017)

Today (18-October-2017) at 06:00 UTC (Icelandic time) people of Grímsey Island got a rude awaking when a magnitude 3,8 to 3,9 earthquake took place. At 05:01 UTC a magnitude 2,9 earthquake had taken place. For the past 48 hours total of 105 earthquakes have taken place in the Tjörnes Fracture Zone. The largest earthquake took place in what seems to be north part of Grímsey Island, there is no population in that part of Grímsey Island but the population lives only few hundred meters away.


The earthquake activity in Tjörnes Fracture Zone in Grímsey Island. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

This earthquake activity started in this part of the Tjörnes Fracture Zone on 05-October-2017 as I wrote about here. Since then it is has been continuously ongoing, for a time it looked it was slowly stopping but the earthquake this morning increased the activity again. Since around 19:00 UTC this earthquake swarm seems to have slowed down a bit again, but the earthquake swarm is still ongoing as of writing of this article. More strong earthquakes in this area cannot be ruled out.

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano on 13-October-2017

On Friday 13 of October 2017 there was an earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. Largest earthquake in this activity had the magnitude of 3,1. Earlier earthquake had the magnitude of 2,9.


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

This latest earthquake is at an interesting location. This earthquake happens close to or inside the hydrothermal area in the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera rim. This area has not seen a lot of earthquake activity in recent months. Magma at this location is at shallow depth as is shown by the hydrothermal activity. Geologists are estimating that magma is at around 1 km depth at the hydrothermal location. This hydrothermal vents have melted hundreds of meters of glacier already due to how energetic they are. The magnitude 2,9 earthquake took place in the normal north-east place in the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera rim. There is also a interesting cluster of earthquakes in the north part of the caldera happening in last few hours.

At the moment there isn’t anything that suggest that an eruption is imminent in Bárðarbunga volcano.

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Minor earthquake swarm on Kolbeinsey Island

Today (Sunday 08-October-2017) a minor earthquake swarm took place in Kolbeinsey Island. Only three earthquakes where detected, but that does not rule out that more earthquakes happened but where not detected due to distance from land and the SIL network.


The earthquake activity is marked by the green star to the north on this image. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Largest earthquake detected had the magnitude of 3,1 and the second largest earthquake detected had a magnitude of 2,1. Since 10:33 UTC this morning, that lack of activity does not rule out more activity in next few days.

New SIL station

I did see in the news today that Icelandic Met Office has added a new SIL station at Bjarnarey Island. This increases the earthquake resolution for Vestmannaeyjar area along with improving earthquake detection in Katla volcano and making it possible to detect small earthquakes deeper south of Iceland.

Icelandic news about the new SIL station, Jarðskjálftamælir í Bjarnarey að frumkvæði Vinnslustöðvarinnar (eyjafrettir.is).

Icelandic Met Office has also moved the SIL station in Vestmanneyjar Island around. The old location was not usable any more due to cultural noise from the population in Vestmannaeyjar Island.

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Ongoing earthquake swarm in Tjörnes fracture zone (TFZ)

Currently there is an ongoing earthquake swarm in Tjörnes Fracture Zone. This earthquake swarm has been going on since 05-October-2017. Over 120 earthquakes have happened so far. Largest earthquakes have had the magnitude of 3,9 (05-October), 3,5 (06-October), 3,0 (06-October). There is a good chance that in recent hours a new magnitude 3,0 earthquake has happened or is going to happen.


The earthquake swarm in TFZ as of 23:15 UTC on 06-October-2017. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

The largest earthquake are felt by the local population in Grímsey Island and the magnitude 3,5 earthquake woke up the population last night (night of 06-October). No damage has happened so far in this earthquake swarm. I don’t know how far away from the population centre this earthquake swarm is happening but the distance is not that great. A 1 – 3 km at the most from the looks of it. Any large earthquakes are going to appear clearly on my geophones and they can be viewed here, the geophone station in Böðvarshólar gives the best signal if an earthquake with magnitude above 3,0 happens in TFZ.

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Article updated at 23:53 UTC. Minor text fixes.

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Increase in earthquake activity in Katla volcano

On the 01-October-2017 there was an increase in earthquake activity in Katla volcano. This increase continues but bad weather is making it difficult to monitor this activity. The largest earthquakes so far had the magnitude of 2,6 (two) all other earthquakes have been smaller in magnitude.


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

I have also started to detect low period earthquakes that are possibly from Katla volcano. The increase in that type of activity seems to follow increase in earthquake activity in Katla volcano. Why that happens is not known to me. For the past 48 hours the activity seems to be lower then two days ago, but the weather is bad in the area preventing good detection of small earthquakes in Katla volcano. It also seems that the bad weather has damaged Goðabunga SIL station. It might take a while until Icelandic Met Office can fix Goðabunga SIL station.

Server upgrade

In the next few days the server for this website is going to be upgraded and moved to United Kingdom since it is slightly cheaper to host it there. I don’t have the exact date on the transfer. I just hope it happens without a problem. If everything remains quiet this should happen without anyone noticing much. I expect the response of this website and everything else that I host to be quicker after the server upgrade.


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Earthquake swarm in Tjörnes Fracture Zone (east of Grímsey Island)

Yesterday (01-October-2017) an earthquake swarm took place in Tjörnes Fracture Zone east of Grímesy Island. Largest earthquake in this swarm had the magnitude of 2,6 all other earthquakes where smaller in magnitude.


The earthquake swarm in Tjörnes Fracture Zone yesterday. Copyright of this image belong to Icelandic Met Office.

Around 55 earthquakes happened in this swarm that appears to be over. This part of Tjörnes Fracture Zone is highly active and has several earthquake swarm every year.

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Continued earthquake activity in Öræfajökull volcano

On 28 and 29th of September 2017 an earthquake activity took place in Öræfajökull volcano. Most of the earthquake that have happened are minor in magnitude, one magnitude 2,5 earthquake took place and on 29th September a magnitude 2,0 earthquake took place, this is automatic magnitude and might not be correct. The depth of this earthquake is the default one (1,1km).


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

It is extremely difficult to know what this earthquake activity means if it means anything at all. The reason being that this might be part of Öræfajökull volcano normal activity that is not going to result in a eruption. There currently is no way to know for sure what this means, since last eruption took place in the year 1728 and proper monitoring of Öræfajökull volcano only started few years ago. Current activity is however slightly above normal background activity that can be expected from a volcano like Öræfajökull volcano.

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Earthquake swarm west of Langjökull glacier

Yesterday (28-September-2017) a earthquake swarm has been taking place west of Langjökull glacier, it is close to a volcano named Presthnjúkar. It is the same system and inside its fissure swarm. The area in question has known faults from the modern era (12.000 years).


The earthquake activity west of Langjökull glacier. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Largest earthquakes that happened had the magnitude of 2,8 and 3,1 both where felt by staff of a tourist company that operates in this area. There is no permanent population in this part of Iceland. I don’t know when this area last erupted.

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