At the moment there isn’t much happening. This is one of the quiet period that regularly happen in Iceland. How long this break is going to last is impossible to know. It might be few more days and maybe several more weeks.
Currently the only notable activity happening is in Öræfajökull volcano but this is the same type of activity that has been happening for weeks now and do not require a new article.
Donations
Please remember to support my work. At the moment I am completely broke and I don’t know how this last week of March is going to be. I have updated the information on how to donate on the Donation site. The updated information can be found here. Thanks for the support. 🙂
When this is written there is almost no earthquake activity in Iceland happening. There has been some minor earthquake swarm activity taking place in both south and north Iceland, but those earthquake swarms have been minor and not gone above 3,0 in magnitude. I don’t know how long this quiet is going to last, the longest quiet period I remember lasted for close to four months, then no or little earthquake activity happened in Iceland during that time.
All quiet in Iceland at the moment. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.
While it’s quiet in Iceland I’m going to add few more short stories to my short stories website. It can be read here.
At the moment everything is quiet in Iceland. This happens and is the normal state in Iceland, even if Iceland is on top of hot spot and a rift zone. No earthquakes swarms are taking place, at least no major activity and Bárðarbunga volcano is quiet at the moment.
Future of my geophone network
I’ve figured out what I am going to do with my geophone network once I move back to Denmark in the year 2017 or 2018 (moving year is going to depending on my saving, it might happen sooner if I’m lucky). It is extremely difficult to maintain and keep my geophone network running when I move back to Denmark. So I am going to close it down for good. Running a remote network also makes it difficult for me to maintain it if a hardware failure takes place (and that is going to happen). The only geophone station that I can keep running after the year 2017 or 2018 is going to be the geophone in Heklubyggð and I am not sure for how many more years that station is going to last. What is important here is that I am running this geophone network on goodwill of people only, for things like housing and electricity. When people life change I often can’t keep my hardware (the geophone) up and running where they are. Doing so from Denmark complicates matter even more, since guidance over the telephone to fix a problem is difficult and often impossible to do from Denmark. Since I need to be around to replace the hardware that failed.
I am not going to stop recording earthquakes. I am just going to do so from Denmark. While I am won’t record as many earthquakes as in Iceland I am going to record any larger earthquakes (magnitude 6,0+) in Greece and other parts of south Europe. I would also record any earthquake in Denmark that goes above the noise threshold (it is high due to road traffic and trains).
My current backlog of earthquake data is now around 5 or 6 years, since past few years have been busy. Both for me and Iceland in terms of earthquake activity. Since I started recording earthquakes in the year 2006 I have recorded around 20.000 earthquakes and that number continues to go up with every year. Just in Bárðarbunga volcano activity in 2014 – 2015 I added around one year worth of earthquake data in less then six months. In any given earthquake swarm in Iceland I add from 100 and up to 1.000 earthquakes if the activity is close to my geophone or strong enough to be seen clearly on them, that is not always the case if the earthquake swarm that is taking place is a micro-earthquake swarm with earthquakes with magnitudes 0,0 – 2,0.
Donations: Even if it is quiet I am always in the need for donations to keep this website running and being able to do something. People can donate with the PayPal button or by buying stuff from Amazon (if needed). Thanks for the support. 🙂
The quiet period in Iceland continues as it has been doing for the past five months (according to my best knowledge). There is always some minor earthquake activity taking place, that is normal and should be expected. It is highly unusual if no earthquake activity was taking place for a long period of time.
All quiet in Iceland. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.
This has been a unusual period of quiet in Iceland best to my knowledge. At least in terms of earthquake swarms and such activity. Volcano eruptions in Iceland only happen on average every 4 to 5 years. Last eruptions (two minor ones) took place in the year 2011. When Grímsfjall volcano erupted. Same year there was also minor eruption in Katla volcano, a week later an minor eruption took place in Hamarinn volcano. since this activity took place it has remained quiet in Iceland volcano wise. There have been earthquake swarms in this period, several strong ones. AT the moment however there is not a lot of activity taking place. That might change at any time. But watching for activity takes a lot of patents since often nothing happens for a long time.
Donation note: According to my bank account. I am going to starve rest of this month. Since I got no money for anything left and all I do spend my money on is food after paying my bills. Donations are welcomed for this reason.
If people buy from Amazon there is also an other way to support me if you shop trough Amazon (I get that paid later on, so that is no help for me at the moment). The links to my Amazon store can be found here. I get paid 5 to 10% of the sale price of what people buy on Amazon this way. Thanks for the support.
It’s been a while since I posted something here. The reason is simple. All this time nothing has happened in Iceland. It is has been quiet now since 21-January-2014 since the glacier flood took place. It appears that this quiet is set to continue for the time being. When it is going to end I do not know.
Quiet in Iceland at the moment. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.
There was some deep earthquake activity on the Reykjanes Ridge during the week. The problem was it was or is poorly located. Most of the earthquakes also had less magnitude of 5,0. Earthquake swarms at this location do happen frequently, but do to location there isn’t much to tell about them.
Donation note: Please donate to help me continue this website. Please check this site for details on how to donate. Thanks for the support. 🙂
A new quiet period has started in Iceland, it is an extension of an quiet period that has been ongoing in Iceland for the past few months and is currently with no end in sight. I don’t know what is driving this quiet period at the moment, since quiet period are a bit of mystery and might always be that.
Quiet in Iceland. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.
For the past two weeks just around 120 earthquakes have been recording during each week (7 days) and for Iceland that is really low amount of earthquakes. This type of quiet period has been ongoing for most of the year 2013. I just hope that new year 2014 is not going to be quite so quiet as 2013 was.
It is quiet in Iceland at the moment. There are so few earthquakes in fact that yesterday (or two days ago) no earthquake was recorded in Icelandic Meteorological Office SIL system for good 10 hours (or something like it) according to geologist that I spoke with yesterday. I am not sure why this happens in Iceland, but it does and not just Iceland. This type of quiet period happens all over the Atlantic rift zone. The weather in Iceland has also not been good, a lot of storms this year and that has been dropping chances of proper detection of earthquakes. This mostly applies to small earthquakes. I don’t know for how long this quiet period is going to last. As for the year 2013, it is one of the most quiet years that I can remember. I have been watching activity in Iceland for since the year 1994, or when I was 14 years old.
Thanks to donations I was able to buy backup power for Böðvarshólar geophone station (website here). This backup power is not meant to keep the station alive for hours, but just for 8 to 10 minutes if the power goes out. It is also meant to keep the electricity the station gets stable and without any problems. Electricity problems can and often do shorten the hardware lifespan, this is I hope going to prevent such issues and problems.
It is quiet and windy in Iceland, so here are few things that I have been thinking for the past few days.
Donations – Support
I have received a lot of donations over the years and for that I am truly thankful. For without them this site would not exist in it’s current form. I love writing and I love earthquakes and volcanoes, so it’s a good mix for me, for my fiction you can go here or buy it as e-book once it’s ready. The people who took my offer long time ago about free e-book if they supported me are going to get an e-book once I have something ready. I have not forgotten you. This is also something that I love to do. But that sadly does not pay the bills for me, for that reason I depend on donations since during quiet times in Iceland I do not have a lot of traffic when it is quiet in Iceland and that means less advertisement income. I have extremely little income from Amazon Advertisement at the moment, since it is 5 – 10% of the price of an item when people buy something from Amazon. Clicks do not count or extremely little with Amazon.
I’ve been into volcanoes and earthquakes since I was 10 years old. So I know a lot about them, since I have not been afraid to collect information and read about the volcano activity in Iceland. So my knowledge of this subject is the one of an expert, even if I am not educated by official school in Iceland in this field. So I can’t have a job in it, since hiring non-educated people in certain fields almost never happens in Iceland. It is just part of the quality standards that are in place in the world. I see nothing wrong with this, since I can and do attend to this subject in my own way.
My main income comes from social welfare in Iceland. That income is however low based on current exchange rate of ISK to DKK (~22,00 ISK = 1 DKK) so I remain poor here in Denmark. I would also remain poor in Iceland (due to higher prices on everything) if I had the slightest interest in living there (I don’t, just to be clear on that). So supporting me helps me to do my work here and keep monitoring the volcanoes and earthquakes in Iceland.
Storms – Windy
Winter storm period has started in Iceland this year. It was later this year than last year, but the strength of the storms is around the same. For this week they are predicting at least one storm tomorrow and maybe a second after that. This leads to lower detection threshold on the Icelandic Meteorological Office SIL network and my geophone network in Iceland. This also means that sometimes many of my geophone stations look like this.
Wind on Skeiðflöt geophone station. This image is under Creative Common Licence. See CC Licence page for more details (above).
The bad weather does not rule out that something might be taking place. It might however rule out technical ability to detect it on the SIL network or my geophone network. Since strong wind noise is followed by strong ocean wave noise on the SIL network and my geophone network (mostly in south Iceland). All that can be done is to wait for better weather to see what is going on in the crust.
Quiet period in Iceland
Currently there appears to be quiet period taking place in Iceland. It has already lasted for around 3 weeks now. Based on the data it is impossible to know when it ends. Bad weather is also making it difficult to know if anything interesting is taking place. Since minor earthquakes get drowned out by the wind and ocean noise on the SIL stations. Since I write mostly about current activity in Iceland this type of quiet period do not leave me with a lot to write about. But if it gets prolonged I am going to try and find something to write about in Icelandic geology.
It has been quiet in Iceland, so quiet in fact that for 7-July-2013 there was only one earthquake recorded on the automatic SIL system. There were more earthquakes recorded on the manual review system that Icelandic Meteorological Office has.
All quiet in Iceland. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.
I do not know how long this quiet time is going to last. Currently it is counting on around 4 weeks at the moment and it appears that the peak is today (so far). When this might change I do not know. I am using this quiet time to enjoy little bit of summer, even if I am broke (little to no money to use) at the moment.
Currently it remains quiet in Iceland in terms of earthquakes and other geological activity. I am using that chance to have a bit of summer break. I am also going to move in August, so there is that. I am not moving back to Iceland. I am just moving inside Denmark. From Åbenrå to a small town named Padborg. But I think smaller towns work better for me then larger towns.
Because I am moving. I have to pay double rent in August. I hope that I do not have to pay double rent in September and October (that means more and new overdraft for me. Something I do think is an bad thing for me). This is going to leave me bit out of pocket. So all support is welcomed.
I am going to be on part-break until after I move to Padborg. But if anything major happens. I am going to write about it soon as possible.
Katla volcano
Katla volcano continues to have small earthquake swarm. What that means is still unclear. Largest earthquake in few days was earlier this week. That earthquake had the magnitude of 2.6 and had the depth of 0.3 km. Several smaller earthquakes did take place following this earthquake swarm. Since then Katla volcano has remained quiet. Small glacier floods are still a high risk from Mýrdalsjökull glacier.
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