Category: Bárðarbunga

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Strong earthquake swarm in Bárðarbunga volcano

During the early hours of 19-November-2016 a strong earthquake swarm took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. This is the strongest earthquake swarm in Bárðarbunga volcano for a long time now. Strongest earthquake had the magnitude of 4,0, other magnitudes where 3,5 and 3,1. All other magnitudes where smaller.

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

This earthquake activity suggests that pressure is increasing fast inside the volcano. I don’t know how much Bárðarbunga volcano has inflated since September-2015 but that must be considerable amount since a earthquake of magnitude 4,0 means a slip of few millimetres (I don’t have the information of much movement happens when a earthquake happen. I didn’t find the data about it). Over the past one year there has been a lot of earthquakes taken place in the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera, suggesting a rapid inflation of the volcano. It is not known if this is going to result in a eruption soon or sometimes later, all that is known is that magma is flowing into shallow magma chamber from deep within the volcano.

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Article updated at 22:42 UTC. Added a missing part.

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano

The regular earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano continued on 18-November-2016. This activity has now been going on for 1 year plus few more weeks, at the moment it has slowed down a bit from when it was most active. I don’t know why that is, but the earthquakes are because magma is flowing into shallow magma chambers in Bárðarbunga volcano.

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

Largest earthquake in yesterdays (18-November-2016) earthquake swarm had the magnitude of 3,0. Other earthquakes so far have been smaller in magnitude. The activity appears to be mostly over by now, but it might resume at any moment since magma inflow and changes connected to it cannot be predicted.

Donations

Please remember to support my work with donations. That helps me keep everything going and writing about earthquakes and volcanoes in Iceland. Thanks for the support. 🙂

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Magnitude 3,5 earthquake in Bárðarbunga volcano

Today (11-November-2016) a magnitude 3,5 earthquake took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. This earthquake, like so many before it, is due to inflation of the volcano that started in September-2015. This is going to be happening for a long time now, since last earthquake sequence that started this way started in 1973 and lasted until 1996 (science paper on it can be found here). After that it was quiet for few year until 2010-ish years before the eruption started in 2014.

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

This inflation and earthquake activity is going to lead to an eruption one day. When that is going to happen is impossible to know until it happens.

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Please remember to support my work. It helps me paying the bills and working on this website and other things when activity is quiet in Iceland. Thanks for the support. 🙂

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano (Week 43)

On 27-Oktober-2016 at 02:08 & 02:09 UTC an magnitude 3,5 and 3,3 took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. During the day several smaller earthquakes happened in the same place in the Bárðarbunga volcano (close to North-East of the caldera).

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

Currently Bárðarbunga volcano is inflating with fresh magma from deep mantle. This process started in September-2015 and is going to continue until a new eruption starts from Bárðarbunga volcano (or in Bárðarbunga volcano).

Italy earthquakes

Since I’m living in Denmark I did record the earthquakes in Italy. I did record the magnitude 5,5 earthquake (poorly) and the magnitude 6,1 earthquake (clearly).

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The earthquake in Italy, this is the magnitude 6,1 earthquake. This image is under Creative Commons licence, please see CC Licence for more details.

I can record those earthquakes in Denmark since the distance is only ~1500 km. The minimum magnitude for my hardware to record earthquakes at this distance is around magnitude 5,4. Due to high background noise where I live.

Laptop and other hardware issues

Since I never got the laptop I was promised (It never showed up in the mail) I might not have any computer in December when I go to Iceland. I might resort to buying a new laptop with a loan from a store I know of. If I do that, I’ll go for a cheap laptop (that is also best, since I only use them when I travel). I also did not get a used hard drive that I promised and other hardware, the persons that told me that they wanted to donate that hardware to me just vanished and have not contacted me again over that. I have gotten hardware donations in the past and that is not a issue to get them if they are sent with the mail from within the EU.

Donations

Please remember to donate. I have to pay a high electric bill next month due to problem they had for the past six months. At least they gave me a discount (I think) since it was entirely their fault. Yet that is going to leave me rather broke in November. Thanks for the support. 🙂

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Earthquake swarm in Bárðarbunga volcano

Earthquake swarm with around 30 earthquakes took place during the night in Bárðarbunga volcano. The largest earthquakes had magnitude of 3,5. Yesterday (14-October-2016) a magnitude 3,3 earthquake took place in Bárðarbunga volcano.

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

Other earthquakes in this earthquake swarm where smaller in magnitude. This earthquake swarm is also interesting for the fact that it seems to change the stress levels around Bárðarbunga volcano started earthquakes in nearby volcanoes. I don’t know for sure what is happening, what has been confirmed by GPS measurements is that Bárðarbunga volcano is currently inflating and that is pushing the plug that collapsed down in the eruption 2014 – 2015 up again and that is creating current earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano.

Article updated at 20:11 UTC. Word fixes.

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano (Week 40)

Today (5-October-2016) a minor earthquake swarm took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. Largest earthquake in this swarm had the magnitude of 3,8 and the second largest earthquake had the magnitude of 3,0. Other earthquakes where smaller in magnitude.

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

The reason for this earthquake activity is inflation in Bárðarbunga volcano. This is pushing the crust that fell down in the eruption of 2014 – 2015 in Bárðarbunga volcano (Holuhraun area) up again and that friction creates earthquakes. New magma is flowing into shallower magma chamber (at depth of ~10 km) from more depth under the volcano (20+ km depth). This started in September-2015 and is going to continue for many more months, maybe until next eruption in Bárðarbunga volcano.

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano

Two earthquakes with magnitude above 3,0 have taken place in Bárðarbunga volcano. The earlier earthquake had the magnitude of 3,8 and the second earthquake had the magnitude of 3,8. Other minor earthquakes also happened.

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Iceland Met Office.

This type of earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano has been going on for months already. What has mostly changed over the last four months is the magnitude of the earthquakes. The rate they are happening is about the same at the moment, once to twice a week currently. I don’t expect this to change until it does.

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Deep earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano

Yesterday (06-September-2016) and today (07-September-2016) deep earthquake activity happened in Bárðarbunga volcano system. Most depth was at 25,9km in Trölladyngja, it is one of several deep earthquakes that have happened in that area. Few earthquakes at depth of 20,8 km took place in Bárðarbunga volcano (outside of the caldera).

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The deep earthquakes on this image are at south-east to Bárðarbunga (in the direction of Grímsvötn, north-east of Grímsvötn) and in Trölladyngja (one blue dot). Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

In Iceland earthquakes at this depth only happens due to movement of magma. Crust stresses do have effects at this depth far as I know. At the moment no magnitude 3,0 earthquakes have happened in Bárðarbunga, that might be unusual since normally after a swarm of deep earthquake few strong earthquakes happens in Bárðarbunga. That has at time of writing of this article not happened. If that happens remains to be seen. I got the feeling there might be something more in the works, but I’m going to wait and see what is going on now. At least wait for a word from Iceland Met Office about what is going on, if anything is going on at all.

All that can be done now is to wait for what happens next. (This is what geology is mostly about, endless waiting for something to happen.)

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano 2-September-2016

On 02-September-2016 two earthquakes with the magnitude 3,3 and 3,5 took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. The magnitude was 3,3 for the earlier earthquake and 3,5 for the second earthquake.

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

This type of earthquake activity is so common now in Bárðarbunga volcano that I rarely bother now to write about it. This type of earthquakes now happen once to twice in Bárðarbunga volcano each week. The reason for this earthquake activity are stress changes in the caldera. This is I suspect going to take a long time, I’m looking at years of this type of earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga. What also makes this more complicated is the rifting currently taking place inside the volcano and on nearby fissures. The results of this mixture might get interesting in the future.

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Earthquake swarm in Bárðarbunga volcano

Today (30-August-2016) an earthquake swarm started in Bárðarbunga volcano. The earthquake swarm took place in the caldera of Bárðarbunga volcano, as has been the case for the past few months. Nothing suggests that magma is on the move or that eruption is imminent, this seems to be tectonic or tectonic related activity in Bárðarbunga volcano after the eruption in 2014, that ended in February 2015.

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The earthquakes in Bárðarbunga volcano. Green stars are earthquakes larger then magnitude 3,0. Copyright of this image belongs to Iceland Met Office.

Largest earthquakes so far have the magnitude of 3,8 (at 13:33 UTC) and 3,4 (at 16:58 UTC), other earthquakes have been smaller in magnitude. The reason for this earthquakes is inflow of magma at depth (more than 10 km) into Bárðarbunga volcano. This is creating stress changes higher up in the crust, resulting in earthquake swarms. More earthquakes can be expected from Bárðarbunga volcano in next few hours to days. This type of earthquake activity almost happens weekly at the moment and that has been the activity pattern since September-2015. I’m not expecting any change in this activity pattern for next few months.