Category: Bárðarbunga

Yesterday (21-March-2018) at 22:56 UTC a magnitude 4,3 earthquake took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. This earthquake is at the usual place inside the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera, but this location that had activity now is also the place that has high energy hydrothermal hot springs. This area of hydrothermal activity is high enough to melt trough the 100 meters of glacier at this location.

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

Earthquake activity appears to be ongoing at the moment in Bárðarbunga volcano and nearby SIL station show that more smaller earthquakes are currently happening in Bárðarbunga volcano than are showing up on the map of Bárðarbunga volcano.

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Yesterday (30-January-2018) Bárðarbunga volcano had strongest earthquake since 27-October-2017. That earthquake had the magnitude of Mw4,9 (at 19:24 UTC). Two earlier earthquakes had happened but they had smaller magnitude of 3,7 (at 17:47 UTC) and magnitude 3,8 (at 18:00 UTC).

The earthquake swarm in Bárðarbunga volcano (green stars). Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Earthquake activity seems to have stopped with last earthquake happening at 21:29 UTC. There is no change in harmonic tremor from Bárðarbunga volcano and that means no eruption. The north-east part of the Bárðarbunga volcano seems to be getting unstable with each earthquake swarm that happens. Magnitude of earthquakes happening has also increased but it is now longer between earthquake swarm. The time between earthquake swarms now can go up to several weeks. Soon after this earthquake activity started in September-2015 this type of activity happened weekly.

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Today (15-January-2018) a earthquake swarm activity took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. This is a regular event at this point and has been for some time now. Today’s earthquakes had the magnitude of 3,5 (09:39 UTC) and 3,3 (09:47 UTC). The location suggests that stronger earthquakes are going to happen soon in Bárðarbunga volcano in the north-east part of the caldera of Bárðarbunga volcano.

Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano (green stars). Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

This earthquake activity shows that Bárðarbunga volcano continues to inflate after the end of the eruption in Holuhrauni in Februar-2015. Currently it is clear that Bárðarbunga volcano is preparing for an eruption. When next eruption might happen is impossible to know.

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On 23-December-2017 at 23:41 UT a magnitude 4,1 earthquake took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. At the moment no other earthquake activity has followed this earthquake.

Green star shows the location of the magnitude 4,1 earthquake. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

More earthquake activity cannot be ruled out in this area as the location is the normal north-east part of Bárðarbunga volcano caldera that has been seeing a lot of earthquake activity since September-2015.

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During the night of 20-December-2017 an earthquake swarm started in Bárðarbunga volcano. This earthquake swarm started at 02:17 UTC with a magnitude 1,4 earthquake. The first magnitude 4,1 earthquake took place at 04:57 UTC and the second large earthquake took place at 05:29 UTC and had the magnitude of 4,4. All other earthquakes where smaller in magnitude and around 40 to 48 earthquakes happened.

Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. Green stars show the location of the earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

This earthquake activity was in the usual north-east part of the caldera of Bárðarbunga volcano. Currently hydrothermal activity is high and remains high in Bárðarbunga volcano. That means there is serious amount of magma inside Bárðarbunga volcano at shallow depth. That has not resulted in any small eruptions at the moment but that might change without warning (watch out for small magnitude focused earthquake activity).

Deep earthquake activity continues south-east of Bárðarbunga volcano (red dot on the image). That is magma movement but that activity doesn’t appear to be getting any shallower at the moment. That activity is focused in one location and might be high risk for an eruption in the future.

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Early morning on 9-December-2017 a magnitude 4,1 earthquake took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. This type of earthquake activity is now common in Bárðarbunga volcano after the 2014 (August) – 2015 (February) eruption. The magnitude 4,1 earthquake in Bárðarbunga volcano was the largest earthquake in this swarm, second largest earthquake had a magnitude of 2,8 and happened several hours before.

The earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano is marked by the green star. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

This earthquake activity is located in the south part of the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera. Not far from cauldrons (at least two) that are now highly active in hydrothermal activity. If that is going to result in any glacier flood is not known at the moment, but the biggest chance is that the water levels are low at this locations at least for now. After the magnitude 4,1 the earthquake activity has stopped for now.

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Today (21-November-2017) at 13:53 and 13:55 UTC two magnitude 3,9 earthquakes happened in Bárðarbunga volcano. This earthquake activity was in the regular area in the north-east part of the Báðarbunga volcano caldera. It remains to be seen if there is any change in conductivity in Jökulsá á Fjöllum following this earthquake swarm.

Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano today (green stars, red dots). Öræfajökull volcano is quiet today (maybe due to extremely bad weather in this part of Iceland at the moment). Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

The aftershocks form a interesting line that goes east to west in the caldera. I’ve not seen that form before and it’s interesting to see it. I don’t know yet if it means anything besides a possible fault in the volcano. It takes the glacier water 9 hours to reach the monitoring station at Jökulsá á Fjöllum, Grímsstaðir from the one at Upptyppingar. I don’t know how long it takes the water to reach Upptyppingar from the glacier, it is at least several hours.

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Please note that with current high activity I’m getting a bit stressed out with the workload when a lot of things are happening in short period of time.

Current list of unrest volcanoes is this.

Bárðarbunga (continued in September 2015 after the August 2014 – February 2015 eruption)
Öræfajökull
Katla
Askja (deep magma activity, not a major concern at the moment)

Other volcanoes are not a concern until they erupt without warning.