I have seen a lot of people worrying about earthquakes and earthquake swarms that take place in Iceland on regular basic. Those worries are not needed as Iceland gets about one to two earthquake swarms on average over the course of one week. Most of the earthquakes that take place in Iceland are tectonic in nature. There are also volcano related earthquakes. But they can be spotted by there location in connection with the volcano in question (Katla, Grímsfjall, etc..).
The reasons for the earthquake swarms in Iceland is geological and is because Iceland sits on a rift zone. This can be shown clearly on this picture here.
Click on picture to get better resolution.
This map clearly shows all the zones in Iceland. In this areas most of Iceland earthquakes happens. But also a big part of Iceland earthquakes happen in areas like SISZ and TFZ.
On the normal week there are about 150 to 400 earthquakes in Iceland over the week. Most of them are in the size ML0.0 and up to ML2.8. Most week have one or two earthquakes that are ML3.0 to ML3.8 in size. On a quiet week there are about 50 to 100 earthquakes, most of them less then ML2.5 in size. When there is a busty week in Iceland the earthquakes numbers can easily go over 2000 and sometimes well over 5000 earthquakes. When that happens IMO doesn’t even bother in classifying and locating all the earthquakes that take place. But they are saved anyway in IMO database.
Picture taken from this blog: Earthquake in Iceland (2008); This blog has more images about the tectonic process in Iceland.
Thanks so much for this info. Does anyone have a good link (in English) for the mythology or Icelandic folklore behind the Katla volcano?
I’m guessing that was a hint. Kind of a pain to make this in bed, but it’s worth a shot.
Icelandic Quakes per week since 5/1/10. Data from SIL’s quake web page
http://i56.tinypic.com/2ik6su0.png
Around 1800 – 1900 yesterday there was an EQ swarm, but around that time there was seismic events many places in the world. Is there a reason for that except coincidence?
Here is a lot of seismograms: http://aslwww.cr.usgs.gov/Seismic_Data/heli2.shtml
GMK – The event you see on the seismograms is a single event, not different ones. All of the worlds seismographs will pick up an event where ever in the world it happens. This event happened at 16:40 GMT near the Philippines 5.6 mag.
Jón – I know that sometimes rivers overflow when glaciers melt for various reasons. But what happens when the river decrease its flow? Can there be some kind of obstruction making this? Look at Eldvátn just east of myrdalsjökull for example.
http://vmkerfi.vedur.is/vatn/VV_Frame.php?r=23020&load_graph=1&direct=1&station_id=218&station_name=Su%F0urland&page_id=265
When a glacier rivers decreases it’s flow it is due to the cold weather. As the colder it the less melting takes place from the glacier.
If there is an obstruction, e.g. a fallen block of ice, the water would very soon find a way around this obstruction. Pressure would build up and with that the water would erode soft parts around the obstruction to get a new path.
Wrote this on Nov 2
Look at todays sky from Solar system live
http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
Solar System: Tue 2010 Nov 2 16:39
Moon 11h 23m 37s -1° 30.3′ 57.0 ER -25.905 118.558 Set
Saturn 12h 46m 22s -2° 35.1′ 10.427 -13.490 100.910 Set
Venus 13h 54m 57s -17° 7.0′ 0.274 -12.397 78.103 Set
Sun 14h 30m 56s -14° 51.6′ 0.992 -4.814 73.320 Set
Mercury 15h 10m 51s -18° 46.7′ 1.407 -1.429 63.552 Set
Mars 16h 7m 5s -21° 30.1′ 2.332 4.491 51.442 Up
Pluto 18h 13m 44s -18° 44.3′ 32.508 20.436 25.542 Up
Neptune 21h 53m 21s -13° 20.2′ 29.731 24.079 -31.820 Up
Jupiter 23h 40m 7s -3° 48.0′ 4.215 19.188 -61.570 Up
Uranus 23h 50m 40s -1° 51.2′ 19.354 19.124 -65.037 Up
With half sky free of any solar bodies, and the moon approaching the new moon, means that Earth will be by itself in the sky. The celestial forces on the Earth will be pulling from one side and will make the magma underground move up and down as the Earth revolves. If celestial forces can create the tides and move oceans, then since magma is liquid rock, and liquids are being affected the celestial pull of the solar bodies, then magma should also affected as well except on a different geological scale. The celestial forces on the Earth will be pulling from one side and will make the magma underground move up and down as the Earth revolves and eventually that up and down motion of magma will increase the amplitude of the motion and eventually break through the crust causing a eruption. These conditions in the sky exist for about the next 4 months meaning volcano season should be over by about March.
The moon does not create any earthquakes on Earth.
See the myth of the moon, http://www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html
Moon causes approx. 80% of tidal forces on Earth, and the Sun amounts to the rest (approx. 20%). The contribution from any other celestial body (planets, etc.) is less than 1%. So this story is nonsense.
Checked the percentages, they are 70% for Moon, and 30% for Sun. Other celestial bodies amount altogether to much less than 1%.
Another factor in tidal forces is the viscosity and boundaries of the fluid. Oceans follow tidal forces because water has low viscosity and oceans have no “roofs” limiting their movement. Magma is of high viscosity and it is confined in closed spaces under the surface of Earth. Hence magma feels the force (identically to the rest of the Earth), but it can not move due to this force due to the baserock above it, and due to its high viscosity.
If magma responded to the tidal forces by movement, continents must move at the same direction, too. Since we do not see this continental tidal movements, neither does magma move due to tidal forces.
The tidal forces affects on the land masses but less movement of course. But still up to 55cm according to this article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide
“Earth tides or terrestrial tides affect the entire Earth’s mass, which acts similarly to a liquid gyroscope with a very thin crust.
The Earth’s crust shifts (in/out, east/west, north/south) in response to lunar and solar gravitation, ocean tides, and atmospheric loading.
While negligible for most human activities, terrestrial tides’ semidiurnal amplitude can reach about 55 centimetres (22 in) at the equator—15 centimetres (5.9 in) is due to the Sun—which is important in GPS calibration and VLBI measurements. Precise astronomical angular measurements require knowledge of the Earth’s rotation rate and nutation, both of which are influenced by Earth tides. The semi-diurnal M2 Earth tides are nearly in phase with the Moon with a lag of about two hours.
Some particle physics experiments must adjust for terrestrial tides.For instance, at CERN and SLAC, the very large particle accelerators account for terrestrial tides.
Among the relevant effects are circumference deformation for circular accelerators and particle beam energy. Since tidal forces generate currents in conducting fluids in the Earth’s interior, they in turn affect the Earth’s magnetic field. Earth tides have also been linked to earthquakes.”
Yeah especially Pluto is important. ;P
How should an icy oddball ( diameter aprox 2300 km. 7 moons are bigger! ) revolving at a distance of around 6 lighthours have any influence on earth at all.
The new moon occurred today at Sat 2010 Nov 6 04:52
The peak of the activity will be over the next 36 hours after the new moon and will subside somewhat till the full moon similar to oceans. At the full moon the activity will not be as intense as this new moon as the up and down of the magma will not be as high and then it will subside. The activity will then increase again at the new moon. The next new moon will see more activity then this new moon.
Here is an google search of images of the tides
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=tides&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1024&bih=653
This are unfounded claims that you make here. They have no bearing in the science far as I know of. This has also not been proven in science and is just a idea and as such has failed test and research far as I know of (Google search didn’t turn up anything useful, but many debunked research on the subject).
Please keep the myth and unproven stuff to your self or on the appropriative web sites.
Tremor graphs ESK HVO and GOD are taking a jump. Which occured often lately (because of wind or rain) but this time the 0.5-1.0 Hz is also rising quite fast. Is there an explanation for this? Still winds?
The increase on 0.5 – 1Hz simply might be just deep ocean waves creating noise. See here for one of the research into this, http://iod.ucsd.edu/~peter/Bromirski_etal_JGRC_1999.pdf (4,2mb pdf)
The same rise can be seen of stations around Vatnajökull. So it must be related to weather or ocean.
I never said anything about earthquakes, but since you mentioned it.
Here is an unfounded claim about earthquakes. When the moon bottoms out at the Declination of -24° 16.4′ on Mon 2010 Nov 8 18:52. The latitudes on each earthquake (M 5+) after that time will mirror the latitudes of the earthquakes (M 5+) before that time.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_big.php
Similar to these quakes
MAG UTC DATE-TIME y/m/d h:m:s LATdeg
MAP 5.6 2010/11/04 12:29:32 12.839
MAP 5.2 2010/11/04 03:48:49 -15.249
MAP 5.0 2010/11/04 01:05:49 51.287
———————————————————–
MAP 5.1 2010/11/03 23:59:20 51.168
MAP 6.0 2010/11/03 23:34:45 -20.440
MAP 5.1 2010/11/03 22:24:50 12.707
Brian Nadjiwon says:
“I never said anything about earthquakes,”
Odd… then what is this? Were you inferring a recipe for pound cake?
“With half sky free of any solar bodies, and the moon approaching the new moon, means that Earth will be by itself in the sky. The celestial forces on the Earth will be pulling from one side and will make the magma underground move up and down as the Earth revolves. If celestial forces can create the tides and move oceans, then since magma is liquid rock, and liquids are being affected the celestial pull of the solar bodies, then magma should also affected as well except on a different geological scale.”
If you want to go down this tack, feel free, but your barking up a tree. The correlation you are referring to does not exist. How do I know it? I looked. The only effect that I can find in 130,000 quakes correlated with Earth-Sun-Moon positions for that moment in time, only reveal a slight up-tick in the GLOBAL incidents of quakes. That’s after you back out the dwell time of the moon at each position of it’s orbit.
Let’s get specific to Iceland since that is what this blog is about.
Here is a plot of the four hour quake count for all quakes that were listed in the SIL catalog back to 4/17/10. These are the ones that I have collected and added to my spreadsheet each day. Along the top you will find the phase of the moon at that time. I can do one for declination if you like.
http://i55.tinypic.com/qsqf0h.png
Odd… I don’t seem too see a correlation. Do you? If so please let us know.
Oh jeebus… I went back and threw in the lunar declination.
http://i54.tinypic.com/14d1sgx.png
Guess what. NO CORRELATION THERE EITHER.
Tsk. Such a promising theory.
It was not even promising. Amusing, if anything…
I’ve just read some in formation above about celestial bodies possibly making volcanoes more active, which seems quite feasible, to which one reply was to keep the myths and unproven things to his self, but upon looking at most of the posts and the fact scientists are unable to predict and have miss predicted the eruptions of Mt Merapi, most the posts have been speculation on whether a specific volcano will erupt or not, i.e Grimsfjall, as i understand or not , scientists don’t exactly understand why tectonic plates move, but they do understand that where there is the most movement is where the volcanoes are, ring of fire Indonesia a good example. So to look at the bigger picture i feel is a good idea, even though sometimes it can seem a bit like science fiction. When you stand close to a painting, it looks blurry, but when you stand back it becomes clearer!! Anyway sorry to rant, i am enjoying reading the post’s and learning more about the seismic activity and the possibility of the volcano erupting in Iceland, even though the recent activity seismically speaking is down to the jökulhlaup!!
Tidal forces do create volcanoes and earthquakes. Just not on Earth. There are several reasons for that and you can find them all by searching Google.
About Moonquakes, http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/15mar_moonquakes/ – Earth creates moonquakes on the moon. But this does not go the other way around.
Volcanism on IO (created by Jupiter and other moons of Jupiter), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanism_on_Io
Still looking at the big picture, you must remember that nature does not try to fool itself!
Natural laws are there, they stay intact, and mother nature follows them. If natural laws tell, that the correlation suggested is impossible, the hypothesis must be abandoned as false assumption. That’s science: Hypotheses are tested, and either validated or abandoned.
If geology is solely responsible for triggering earthquakes then where are the 5+ magnitude quakes around the erupting volcano in Indonesia. The last quake for Indonesia was this.
Update time = Sun Nov 7 2:22:08 UTC 2010
MAP 6.0 2010/11/03 11:18:16 -4.614 134.040 14.8 NEAR THE SOUTH COAST OF PAPUA, INDONESIA
This quake is a couple days before the major eruption.. Where are the major quakes just before, during and after a major eruption?
There will be a noticeable difference in the latitudes of the earthquakes around when the moon bottoms out on Mon at 18:52 UTC, geology will not be able to account for this as it exists.
This is a nice example of basic human psychology. Expecially uneducated people tend to mix coincidence with correlation and causation.
The earthquake near Merapi occurred due to plate-tectonic processes acting on nearby fault. Merapi erupted due to these same processes, not due to the earthquake. The timing of these two events is a coincidence, and they have no direct correlation/causation with each other. The only correlation between them is plate tectonics acting nearby in a major way.
@Spamhead Re: Mt Merapi.
Mt Merapi was not missed. Seven years ago there was a flurry of warnings about increased activity there. All you can do is watch and listen. Stresses in the Earth melt accumulation, failure points of strata, heat movement… that’s all fine and dandy from a theoretical point of view, but all of these structures are buried under millions of years of strata and are a bit difficult to get to and physically measure. So you are forced to use historical data, behavior patterns for the volcanoes etc.
Then you run into the problem of having hundreds of generations of families who have lived in the area, grown up in the area, and died in the area… year after year, who are a bit incredulous when someone makes a prediction and yet again, nothing happens. That’s why you have such panic there now… this is not they way that their mountain behaves… at least in social memory.
No.. Merapi wasn’t missed. Just like Etna isn’t missed, Katla isn’t missed, Ranier isn’t missed. They will all erupt. The problem is determining when exactly that will be… and doing so with certainty.
A very succinct summary Lurking! If you (generic) add that humans tend to believe what they want to believe and generally choose the short-term advantage in the hope that the long-term, major disadvantage associated with it never materialises, we have a pretty neat explanation of human behaviour when faced with impending natural disasters.
What strikes me as unusual in the current situation is the trust the majority of residents have for the offices and officers of Badan Geologi. Most have actually heeded the varnings and acted in accordance with them. Compare with the USGS and Mount St Helens where economic concerns allowed lumber operations to continue inside zones of danger and only luck of timing kept the death toll as low as 57. How would the people of Naples and Augsburg react to warnings that an eruption might be imminent at Campi Flegrei or Laacher See?
Tides
Ever since junior high we were taught that it was the Sun’s and Moon’s gravity which were directly responsible for causing the tides on Earth. Now, out of blue, I am told, that that is not so. It’s Moon’s gradient of its gravity that is causing Earth’s tides. Please, help.
The statement that it is the Sun’s and Moon’s gravity that causes tides is not incorrect, just simplified. More accurately, it is the gradient of the gravity that causes it. What happens is that the water on the side closest to the Moon is closer to the Moon than the center of gravity of the Earth and so the Moon exerts more pull on that water and it bulges out (high tide). On the other side of the Earth, the Moon is pulling more on the center of mass of the Earth than on the water and so the Moon pulls the Earth out from under the water a little bit, causing another bulge or high tide. That is why there are two high tides per day. Hope this helps.
Dr. Eric Christian
Just found this explanation on Nasa web site, if the moon causes tides surely it has an effect on Earthquakes and possibly Magma on Earth!! What i am trying to say is if the moon cause the oceans to bulge, could this not have some effect on magma? Which in effect cause stress on tectonic plates? Also there is a lot we don’t understand about gravity and physics, which is why they are looking for missing particle links in the Haldron collider!
Tides have really weak force. They do have effect on the ocean. But just because it is free water. More information about this in the like that I did come with above.
See my explanation above: Magma and water are totally different animals when responding to tidal forces.
Re: Brian Nadjiwon
{snicker}… your funny.
“If geology is solely responsible for triggering earthquakes then where are the 5+ magnitude quakes around the erupting volcano in Indonesia. The last quake for Indonesia ….”
And here are all the quakes within 500 km over the last 30 some odd years.
ITS A SUBDUCTION ZONE
http://i53.tinypic.com/65ocas.png
Wow, great plot. So I guess a magma reservoir going down to 100 km isn’t really deep?
[Indonesean scientist,] “Sukhyar said magma was now forming 100 kilometers under the volcano and might trigger a larger eruption.”
Lurking, the magma chamber is supposed to be about 500 cu km starting about 1 km and going to as far as 100K down. but it is a volume of no quakes. So is there anyway to do a plot to see that volume of no quakes … to use the no-quakes volume to image the magma chamber?
I’d have to bring it in tight and do a profile. Problem is I’m not at my comp right now. It will have to be tomorrow (my tomorrow).
Also a bit of warning about that plot.. you know, the one I’m gonna do tomorrow. I only have access to quakes larger that M4.5. That’s going to make the resolution of the plot pretty rough. It’s not like the mini and micro quake lists of Iceland.
_”A”_ magma chamber? If that were true, it’d be a highly unusual beast more akin to a tube some 2.25 km in diameter stretching 100 km down. More likely, it is a system of magma chambers with a deep reservoir which holds the majority of magma and a shallower chamber of just a few cu km some kilometers below Merapi.
This reminds me of the news about six months ago that the Cascades had a deep magma reservoir on the same order of size as Yellowstone (if not larger) and that as a consequence, St Helens might produce a VLE in the not too distant future.
That said, I suppose one cannot rule out the possibility that a period of activity has begun where the deep magma chamber(-s) below Merapi has reached a point where a large infusion of magma is being sent upwards at great pressure, resulting in larger and more violent eruptions of longer duration at Merapi.
Okay… here is that slice of that plot centered around Merapi.
http://i52.tinypic.com/33c99xj.png
Yes, there is an area lacking in quakes… but this plot is limited to Mag 4.5 on the low end. Smaller quakes might be there.
And, as Henrik points out, this “dead zone” will actually be sort of a tube treking up the spine of Indonesia since the whole country sits on a volcanic arc. (see: http://bigthink.com/ideas/24421 “What might control the width of volcanic arcs?” for more on the profile of this sort of structure)
@spamhead
It has an effect on pore pressure. That’s the water in the nooks and crannies of the strata and rock. Pore pressure goes a long way in lubricating fault lines. That’s why you can see a slight GLOBAL uptick in activity at New and Full moon, but it’s nothing you can really make a prediction off of. There is nothing in the Sun-Earth-Moon orientation that determines where a quake will occur.
A bit more on that “slight” uptick. It’s there, it’s real… but it’s not large enough to really claw it’s way out of the noise floor. We’re talking hundredths of a percent increase in occurrence.
I’d rather caal that feature an “eye-catcher”, not a real feature (speaking statistically).
Jon, I’ve always seen the fissures depicted on the surface, but how deep do they extend. The crust in some of those ares in 40 km or more deep? Do individual fissures extend all the way down, as a necessity for plate splitting and movement?
I don’t want to write a lot of long detailed information about this. Since far better information are already on the internet. Here are two web pages with good basic information on Geology.
http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect2/Sect2_1b.html
http://ase.tufts.edu/cosmos/print_images.asp?id=4
That’s a pretty good question.
In continental rifting, the crust thins and the lithosphere and mantle rise towards the surface, and you get a series of grabens.
http://i52.tinypic.com/33erngx.jpg
(Figure 7.24 a and b from Global Tectonics 3rd ed)
But I’ve read where Iceland is composed of a chunk of continental crust sitting on top of a segment of oceanic crust. South towards the Reykjanes it turns into a slow spreading oceanic ridge, with accretion occurring between the two plates as they move apart.
A while back, Passerby posted some links to “ridge jumping” as the activity moved from spreading center to spreading center. If that is the case, I imagine that there are a series of semi parallel abandoned fault segments that used to serve as the spreading center. But that’s just me mulling it over.
The harmonic tremor in Grímsfjall has been creeping back up again for the past few hours.
Like other stations around Katla, and also other parts of Iceland. Must be weather…
Yes, there is a powerful extra-tropical cyclone (“Becky”) developing near Iceland, and probably we’ll see instrumental noise a few more hours derived from the strong winds
Satelite
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2250/beckyu.gif
Forecast
http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/808/becky.gif
Ever hear about ELI the ICE man?
In an inductive circuit (L), Voltage (E) leads the Current (I). One way to look at it is that the voltage buildup causes the current flow. This shows up when you take various measurements of an active circuit. In a capacitive circuit (C), Current (I) leads Voltage (E).
I mention this since the bump in the tremors that Alison mentioned have a rise at all frequencies at about the same time. Back when the flooding event occurred/started, this wasn’t the case. Higher frequencies kicked in first, then the mid and lower ones.
Significant?
There is a scientific link between sun spots, seismic and volcanic activity and climate.
http://www.jupitersdance.com/
http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/1989/JB094iB12p17371.shtml
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/bradley1992b.pdf.
Ha. It’s been funny watching all of you smug people getting your knickers in a twist over some guy’s moon gravitational pull theory. The truth is likely that we don’t have that much more info regarding exactly what out there in the solar system, or the Universe for that matter, might potentially cause earthquakes anymore than we did back when we still believed the earth was flat. Speaking of knickers, according to
my research so far, up until about 150 years ago, many people in Iceland believed that Katla’s eruptions were caused by a troll-witch who became enraged by a farmhand who had stolen her magic knickers.
I love that story, or for that matter. I love Icelandic stories and literature in general. It is so stylish:)
2 icelandic volcanologists are talking to each other:
-Is Hekla awake?
*I don’t know, but the lava is. (Falls over dead after being burned to cinders by Hekla)
On Tidal Forces:
Since this is pretty close to my field of specialisation from back when I did my Ph.D in wave-difraction and fluid dynamics, I will state just one of all the factors that shoots this theory in the fot. But it is the most essential one. I have simplified it a lot to make it easier to understand for non-physicists.
First of all, we must remember that the gravitetic forces we are talking about are small, really small. Even the moons effects are comparatively small, and the only reason it affects the oceans is the high fluidity of water and cumulative effect over time.
Let us say that water have the fluidity of 1 and magma have the fluidity 0,0001 on average and that the ocean is able free-move whereas magma is confined. What does then the confined thingymabit have for effect? Well, if we look at semi-confined waters like the Baltic-sea it has a really small tidal effect. Why? Because of the confined space of water the cumulative time effect is to small to make a real tidal effect take place.
What am I harping about? Well the cumulative time effect over the Atlantic is 5 hours, the cumulative effect of the Baltic is 15 minutes. Remember that the hellishly week gravity is way to week to produce instant tidal forces, the gravity needs time to work, inserting power into the system in small discrete intervalls. There is though a systematic point where the effect ebbs out and that is that the maximum time that the moon actually affects the body of water is 3 hours, after that the spot on earth we are hypotetically measuring have rotated away from the gravity well of the moon.
Okay, now to the magma and cumulative time effect. Magma either in chamber or moving around in small balls or globs or whatever we might call them are having a lower time-index then the Baltic sea so there is quite simply not enough time for the gravitetic forces to acumulate. And here the theory just died for you guys.
@Lurking:
When you stomp with your graphs it is like watching a giant lizard eating Tokyo. I laughed so much that I sprayed morning coffee all over:)
While I am at it…
Someone said that we are knowing to little to say for certain things about gravitetic effects on volcanoes and quakes.
Let’s here add the thing of viscosity. Water have a high fluid-index whereas magma has a low one. But we are actually also talking about the even lower fluidity index of bedrock here, ie. the crust. Remember that in phsyics nothing is really solid over long time-frames.
So if the gravity of the moon and other stellar bodies affects the globe we should be able to measure it directly with something that measures movement.
Enter the most exact measuring device known to man doing just this, it exists and it is on Iceland. For some reason the government on Iceland felt it necessary to place it at Hekla.
Enter Heklu borehole-strain meter. As you can see there is no effect at all:
http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/hekla2009/borholu_thensla.html
If I had been Lurking I would have been able to put in nifty little moons amplifying my point.
@Sigrún
We all know that it is beer that starts eruptions. Icelandic volcanos are just large alcoholics with bad stomachs. 🙂
Ok, Dr. le Strange you may have astutely killed the guy’s moon theory but wasn’t there a second (or a continuance of the Nov 5, 2010) Merapi eruption on Nov 6, 2010 (the last New Moon)?
And just wondering about this bit. Will the increase in solar activity prompt more eruptions or not? Thanks in advance! :
From the NASA Science News
“The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms.”
Yepp, there was activity in Merapi on the 6th of november, but that would have happened anyhoo and had nothing to do with the moon.
I have a hard time seeing that solar-storms would have anything to do with volcanos since again the comparative forces are week and will manifest as electrical effects and I have never heard of volcanos being affected by electricity. But, it might have effects on power-grids etcetera. And of course it will produce spectacular boreal lights.
I like that NASA bit abut the Sun waking up. For a while there, when David Hathaway would issue his new Cycle 24 predictions I would update a trend chart to predict roughly where his next prediction would be at.
With 813 “no-spot days” out of a typical 486 “no-spot days” for a Solar minimum, it’s difficult to not be in a “waking up state.” And yes, with the advent of technology we are more susceptible to Solar issues… imagine how things would react to a Carrington Event. (Solar “Super Storm” of 1859)
What I have issue with are the more odd theories… such as matter forming in the interior of the Earth from the solar wind stream and electron accumulation. Which then causes stress and makes Earthquakes and Volcanoes. Even the “neutrinos affect decay rates” line turned out to be a regurgitation of an old observation that was trounced within six months of it’s initial statement… only to turn back up with out the counter data as a “new discovery” here recently.
At least with the Moon/gravity idea there is a “bit” of merit to it… and as Jack @ Finland points out, statistically speaking there is “nothing there,” though I like to look at the pretty graphs and drool over that little noisy as hell spike/bump/nudge. UC Berkley seems to think there is “some” effect on the San Andreas, and I can see … ‘something’ in the global plot, but I can’t pull it out and prove it. It’s elusive. Besides, several quadrillion tons of moving asthenosphere tend to have a greater influence than a slight gravitational tug that is constantly changing direction and orientation.
It would be easier to prove a lunar link to menses than to earthquakes.
@Sigrún
We all know that it is beer that starts eruptions. Icelandic volcanos are just large alcoholics with bad stomachs. 🙂
@ le Strange: Btw, I think you have the Icelandic volcanoes confused with Norwegian men.
Nah, the Norwegian men just wish to behave as Swedish women;)
@Jón:
I just looked at the Esjufjöll webcam after the 3 quakes. Is there a Jökulhlaup going there?
Looks like the cam is about to be over-run.
http://live.mila.is/jokulsarlon/
And… nope. Found a pic to compare with. It is “just” the river from lake Jökulsárlón.
You have the tide coming into the lagoon. So there is different flow in and out.
I just knew that a tide would bite my ass today 🙂
The waters seems quite normal. Maybe a bit more due to heavy rains.
Interesting tremor trace for GOD station and no high storm warnings at IMO I can see. Comments?
Any news or unusual behaviour from Grímsfjall lately?
The water flow in the Kolgrima river has increased by 100% in 6-7 hours.
Do you have a source for this? It might be significant.
Where is that river? Volcanos near?
The last measurement was 02.00 and interesting to see the next one.
http://vmkerfi.vedur.is/vatn/vdv_gmap.php
If you look at the long term graph (14 days), you’ll see that it’s up to now nothing extraordinary.
Yes I was aware of the 14day plot. However there was an extraordinary event in that period and cannot be used as evidence for an ordinary period.
Kolgrima is the outlet of Skálafellsjökull and Heinabergsjökull on the eastern side of Vatnajökull. When I look at my maps, it’s quite unlikely that water can flow from Grímsvötn that far to the east.
@ Jules. The winds around GOD station is in excess of 20m/s which would make the tremorchart react like that.
http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/elements/
@Poisonman – Tremors are stabilising and the glacial flood has more or less stopped.
The tremorcharts for soth and eastern parts of Iceland are showing alot of activity but based on the above link it is all wind noise.
You can actually see the winds quite well on this shaking camera.
http://live.mila.is/jokulsarlon/
@Sigrún
“Ok, Dr. le Strange you may have astutely killed the guy’s moon theory”
A little premature? Because there’s two theories. Tidal forces for volcanoes but not for earthquakes. For earthquakes , check out the lats on the quakes before and after the moon bottoms out tomorrow at 18:52 UTC, there will be noticeable difference. I am not suggesting that is due to tidal forces.
For volcanoes, tidal forces is a playing role in determine when and how the eruptions happens. There is also increased volcano activity in the Philippines, New Zealand, Cameroon, Hawaii and of course, Iceland, plus the “biggest eruption in a century” for that volcano in Indonesia. All of this hours within the new moon.
I think all of this adds up to more to than volcano activity than usual. For this new moon period the intense activity [eruptions] will be over really soon. Given the amount of activity the full moon might see an eruption. The next new moon will be more intense. For the next couple of months (till the sun reaches Jupiter) will see the more than usual volcano activity. Where and when? That’s something I’m always asking.
There are 4 stages to knowledge; ridicule, understanding, acceptance and obvious. While it may be obvious to me, in those cases, where it’s not, acceptance typically comes from understanding.
And there is also ignoring the coiled up evidence of a snake laying on the path directly in front of you.
That usually doesn’t turn out well.
Interesting that when presented with glaring contrary evidence you resort to the lukewarm ad-hominen styled ‘you are all cretins and just can’t fathom the significance of my cherry picked data-points’ sort of observation.
Yeah… real convincing.
“cherry picked data-points”
I can afford to. For earthquakes, all it takes is to show one is influencing the triggering of the earthquakes to turn things upside-down but I will admit that’s a tall order. We could show proportionally that time interval between quakes is proportional to the distance between planets but that would be “cherry picked data-points”? The best proof that moon is influencing the where and when of triggering earthquakes is the inflection points like the bottoming out of moon tomorrow.
For volcanoes, I’m not saying it’s black and white, eruptions only occur at the new moon or full moon, but that tidal forces as well as local geological conditions determine what happens. If you’re not looking for it, odds are you won’t see it, and if there is any correlation between the tidal cycle and local seismic activity, it would be missed.
Well, my two other posts present the data in the most clear and unencumbered way of seeing what your claiming.
Again… show me.
Here… try this on for size.
1) Volcanic events are typically accompanied by earthquakes.
2) The Moon had a roughly 27.3 day orbital period
3) The Moon’s orbital declination swings from about 18.29° to 28.58° over a period of about 15 years.
Given that, and the following world wide quake plot, show me the correlation. Feel free to point to something in this plot that gives evidence to your argument.
http://i55.tinypic.com/ivz3mw.png
Item 2 should read “has” instead of “had”.
Number of Earthquakes Worldwide for 2000 – 2010
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php
There was a peak in the number of earthquakes in 2007. If as I suggested that earthquakes are being trigger from above, what would account for that increase in 2007? Another body in the solar system perhaps?
“Comet Holmes (official designation: 17P/Holmes) is a periodic comet in our solar system, discovered by the British amateur astronomer Edwin Holmes on November 6, 1892. Although normally a very faint object, Holmes became notable during its October 2007 return when it temporarily brightened by a factor of about half a million, in what was the largest known outburst by a comet, and became visible to the naked eye. It also briefly became the largest object in the solar system, as its coma (the thin dissipating dust ball around the comet) expanded to a diameter greater than that of the Sun (although its mass remained minuscule).[2]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17P/Holmes
Was that comet responsible for the extra quakes in 2007? It could mean that earthquakes could be used like a sonar screen on a submarine and be able to track things with a range further than telescopes.
Refer to the plot of the actual counts from the USGS data.
Now… if you really want to be elegant in your “latitude” idea, you will come up with a mechanism that can cause what you claim. I don’t mean a “the moon’s over here so it just happens” sort of idea. I mean a real physical way of the moon pulling off the stunt. Say… differential gravitational attraction on the seams of the plates. I can (and have) done the math on the Earth-Sun, Earth-Moon system’s gravitational attraction, and then summed that via vector addition to get a sum. It’s a pretty waveform, but it doesn’t correlate with anything. After that I never felt the need to waste additional time and effort on the matter. If you want to really go there, here is a start. On Google Earth, you can measure the different dimensions of the various plates. Then, using a program such as Alyone Ephemerides you can get the angular separation of the Sun and Moon. Using a bit of spherical math, you can get the equivalent surface distance of those separation angles as applied to the surface of the Earth. Surface Distance = (Radius of Earth) x (Angle in Radians).
The idea that I was after at the time was that one end of a plate would feel a different combined pull as the Moon-Sun fought over it.
It’s a pipe dream.
As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the effect is far too small when compared to the massive forces that these plates feel from the churning Athenosphere. When you get mass ratios on the scale of Jupiter / Io, then you’re in the ball park. Earth / Moon and Earth / Sun just don’t have that sort of dynamic. Even if it’s there, it would be totally swamped by the greater forces at play.
You do release that the effect of the moon on the ocean is really quite weak.
Here is the earth-moon distance, too scale.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/Earth-Moon.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_%28astronomy%29
Tidal forces have no role in how eruption turns out. If that where the case on Earth scientist would have found that out long time ago.
“check out the lats on the quakes before and after the moon bottoms out tomorrow at 18:52 UTC”
Tell you what, let’s check them out right now using historical data.
I really don’t like throwing away data after I’ve rummaged around in it to get it into a usable format… so I still had the files laying around.
The cute part about the “latitude” idea is that usually people don’t have that available as a ready reference. Well, I do.
In order for a to be sound this idea has to be reproducible. In other words, I should be able to go back into the record and see some sort of artifact in the data that points to something equated with a feature of the moon’s orbit. It doesn’t prove that the moon is the cause, but it does add ammunition to the idea that there might be something there.
Again… show me.
http://i53.tinypic.com/qxm6gh.png
Note: 2006 look weird because that is the way the data came off the USGS server. No munging, smoothing or tweaking. This is raw latitude data.
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
1505 1361 1341 1358 1672 1844 1865 2270 1948 2030 1702
I am referring to the magnitude 5+ quakes only. I added up the totals for each year for 8.0 to 9.9, 7.0 to 7.9, 6.0 to 6.9, 5.0 to 5.9
I am aware that this is relatively new and I’m assuming that over the time period the technology is getting better and the USGS is able to capture the data about more and more quakes, not that’s there’s more.
The comet would imply it’s not gravity, it did not have the mass, but it did have size. Size matters!
Only from a density standpoint. In the war of gravity, mass wins.
Question for you…
If I have two events that releases 1.41 terajoules of energy… should I discount them for the one event that releases 2.0 terajoules? That’s the difference in a Mg 4.9 vs a 5.0.
And while we are on the subject of how prolific a particular quake is
Mag Average days to same or greater event
7.0 26.7
7.1 33.9
7.2 42.2
7.3 54.8
7.4 65.8
7.5 81.1
7.6 101.1
7.7 137.1
7.8 192.0
7.9 295.2
8.0 453.4
8.1 668.2
8.2 1038.5
Above 8.2 the data squirrels out due to a lack of events. I imagine that if you run the trend backwards (towards the weaker events) you will find that a 5.0 isn’t that big of a deal… world wide.
The only way physical size can matter is weight (or mass), i.e. gravity. There’s nothing else.
GDay all , you can’t climb mt everest without establishing base camp !, start by reading my PDF on the :- ” Short and Longer-term Planetary Effects on Sun and Earth ” ” Google ” kenneth dickman the real climate science , also , ” john h nelson
sunspots ” and ” o ” yes while your at it look up ” Oxford ” to see the difference between ” Ge0-centric & helio-entric , just so as when i come back we are on the same page .
Not sure where this is going…
But you can find a correlation with the orbit of Jupiter and sunspot cycles. There has been a bit-o-paper generated about it, but I don’t have the source links for it.
Mainly it has to do with the rather thin atmosphere of the Sun being susceptible to gravitational effects of the second most massive thing in the Solar System.
A bit outside the realm of a blog about Iceland’s Volcanoes, so I’ll leave it at that.
@Brian Nadjiwon: Sorry, I should have said \seemingly killed the guy’s moon theory\.
After reading through at least 15 pages of comments on this blog, it seems to me that there’s no sure way to predict volcanic eruptions. No offense meant to the scientists here but although we know the Universe is infinite, it’s very hard for most humans to grasp the concept of infinity. As far as physics go, I like what I’ve read about the chaos theories (those articles written for lay people like me) especially the antimatter theories. From what I read, sometimes there’s tremors, quakes, glacial flooding, etc. etc. the day (or a few days) before an eruption and sometimes not. Therefore your theories are no crazier to me than any of the other theories. I go by my \hunches\ and I think something will happen between Dec 23 to 25 Yule and New Year’s day 2011, winter solstice and then again within the first and last days of Spring 2011. I think Nov 9th and 11th may show increased seismic activity as well.
I have a hunch too, but it has to do with a certain Federal Reserve Board chief, his minions and a collection of pike poles.
Old school, Vlad Ţepeş style.
“I think Nov 9th and 11th may show increased seismic activity as well.”
hey, I was correct about this (above).
Earthquake swarms happens at random. Just like the rain.
Yes, that is true from what I have learned here. However, although this was just a good “guess”, the 9th and the 11th had higher or stronger activity than the 10th- according to this site: http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/
I can also say that there is going to be a strong earthquake swarm tomorrow on the Reykjanes. But that does not mean that I can predict one even if that happens.
There are theories how try to forecast earthquakes and earthquake swarms. But they do not work so good. I have few of ideas that I have been testing out on that field. I got a low success rate at current time and needs a lot more work.
Frequency of Occurrence of Earthquakes
Magnitude Average Annually
8 and higher 1
7 – 7.9 15
6 – 6.9 134
5 – 5.9 1319
Total 1469 /365 = 4.02 quakes/ day
If the quake period is 27.3 days
8 solar bodies; Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus
Each quake requires 2 solar bodies, 8 Choose 2 = (7*8)/2=28
On Average there should be 28 * 2 quakes for each solar body be with each another solar body and be on either sides or 56 quakes. The mirror image as well, that would make 56 * 2 quakes per period = 112 quakes/period
365.25/27.3 = 13.37912088
13.37912088 * 112 = 1498.461538
1498 / 365 = 4.104109589
Seems a little high, I am not sure if 112 quakes occurs each and every period due to randomness of the planets.
Before you run off on a tangent and get eaten by the statistics monsters…
That data is an abbreviation of the full set.
Here it the rest of the data:
Mag – Average – Sigma – Skew
7.0 – 26.7 – 28.2 – 2.3
7.1 – 33.9 – 34.7- 1.8
7.2 – 42.2 – 43.5 – 1.7
7.3 – 54.9 – 52.2 – 1.3
7.4 – 65.8 – 62.5 – 1.4
7.5 – 81.1 – 79.3 – 1.7
7.6 – 101.1 – 90.4 – 1.4
7.7 – 137.2 – 146.0 – 2.3
7.8 – 192.0 – 234.9 – 2.5
7.9 – 295.3 – 342.2 – 2.6
8.0 – 453.4 – 509.2 – 1.7
8.1 – 668.2 – 824.6 – 2.5
8.2 – 1038.5 – 1088.7 – 1.9
Roughly 68.3% of the time, the actual number of days will be within one sigma either side of the average. 95.5% of the time, within 2 sigma. (standard deviations)
Provided that a normal distribution holds true for that data.
This means that there is a lot of slop available in those numbers and that they can only be used as a general description of what to expect. Trying to force any more out of them is… well, foolish.
Normal distribution is generally ok for earthquakes, as the individual quakes are mostly independent of one another. This does not hold for e.g. swarms.
Well, those 8 solar bodies do not know about your calculations! ;o)
And they do not behave erandomly. They continue their weherabouts very willingly steered by Mother Nature’s song, i.e. Newtonian gravity.
@Lurking: Whoa! Jeez, that was brutal. Happy to say that I never ran with that pack.
@Sigrún
“it seems to me that there’s no sure way to predict volcanic eruptions.”
I agree, as is. Given initial reaction I received here with my ideas, that’s surely not to happen any time soon. The reaction seems to be widespread in the west. It seems in the east, India and Japan are more open to these sort of ideas.
“It seems in the east, India and Japan are more open to these sort of ideas.”
And that’s why you have people hanging out in villages around Merapi despite the evacuation orders.
Everything you have stated should show up in those plots… if there was anything to it.
Some people feel an incessant need to peddle tripe. Desperately seeking recognition for an idea that they can not prove.
And to make it up to the rest of you, a perspective plot of all quakes from the SIL listing for November.
http://i52.tinypic.com/atpx13.png
“noticeable difference in the latitudes of the earthquakes around when the moon bottoms out on Mon at 18:52 UTC”
“Some people feel an incessant need to peddle tripe. Desperately seeking recognition for an idea that they can not prove.”
It appears you already absolutely sure it won’t happen like I said because of your certain uncertainty about how it all works to be certain that I am wrong.
May I ask you a question? In your explanation of/theory on the causes of eartquakes, is the influence of the Moon gravitic or astrological in nature?
Yes, I am certain that you are certain about your certainly odd certainest opinion that data which should appear in the charts and support your position, does not.
It’s not a problem. Could there be a quake or a volcanic eruption coinciding with the lunar declination/phase/separation angle, or whatever? Most certainly. They happen all the time.
But remember, correlation does not mean causation. (gawd, I thought I would never have to use that phrase)
Don’t be put out, I’ve chased this theory myself. That’s why I have the amount of data laying around that I do. I can accept the notion that at Full and New moon, there is a slight uptick in the numbers of quakes on a global scale. UC Berkley thought there was a correlation, and even though it’s burried in noise, I can see the uptick as well. But that is on a global scale, and as Jack @ Finland accurately points out, statistically it is meaningless. In other words the signal is not strong enough to stand out from the noise floor and support any sort of correlation algorithm. The chances of repeating the tests and getting the same result from just random noise are pretty high.
In each of those plot that I made, I used nothing but the raw data as presented by the USGS. This is their data. Each year in the tally used all quakes for that year. I then took the individual years and appended them into one rather massive spreadsheet, pulling each date/time for the event and running them through Alcyone Ephemeris to get the Sun/Moon position, then folded that data back into the spreadsheet. If there was a correlation… it would have stood out like a sore thumb. For the quakes per day plot, the entire 130,000+ record spreadsheet (about 5 years) was sifted and the count for each day was tallied. Again, if there was something there, you would have seen it.
It’s not that I don’t like your theory, it’s just that the data does not support it.
Just so there are no hard feeling, here is the plot of the percentage of quakes per 10th of a degree of lunar phase. There is actually something there, but as Jack @ Finland points out, it is statistically meaningless.
http://i53.tinypic.com/dr5nus.png
It was actually quite fun to make that one. Each time I folded in another years worth of data, broad spikes would start showing up around specific Sun-Moon separation angles. I was chasing that one for a few weeks. Each additional year would tighten up the spikes. That’s when I got on that geometry kick with the plate dimensions, looking for some sort of cause. After about 5 years, the spikes simmered down into what you see there. The important part of that is the vertical scale… it’s in the less than 2 tenths of a percent range. That’s noise. Big time.
Now… for a bit of real world humor.
Barney Fife Lives!!!
http://i54.tinypic.com/2dr5hxl.png
(note for all, “Barney Fife” was a bumbling sheriff’s deputy character on “Mayberry RFD”, and old black and white TV program. Barney was so incompetent that Sheriff Taylor made him carry his one allowed bulled in his shirt pocket so that he would not hurt himself)
HVO and GOD tremor plots look interesting…?
12 kph winds off the coast, 2 to 3 kph over land.
Hmm…
For the future record. Next time this happens I am going to delete any such comments that starts on this unclaimed stuff. I allowed this to start now so it could be settled here once and for all.
Actually I find it quite interesting reading your rebuttal of these theories. It means that if I read something similar somewhere else I have seen that it has been disproved.
Actually I feel kind of bad about feeding the troll.
My apologies.
But at least I got a chance to use up some old data that was lying around.
Yes, I agree. I’m a moderator in a natural sciences forum, and with some regularity I have to deal with the full moon stuff, basically always when happen an earthquake that occurs coincidentally with the full moon or some peak of solar activity, always appear someone exploring the coincidence. But it is reading some of the discussions that took place here and in many other places (I apreciated the conversation here about viscosity for example) which helps me to refute some myths. But I understand very well Jón, it’s quite tiring to constantly debunk these things.
@Henrik
\May I ask you a question? In your explanation of/theory on the causes of eartquakes, is the influence of the Moon gravitic or astrological in nature?\
It may be what I am suggesting is astrological in nature, astrology is about being predict future events based on the planets positions.
What I said is based on astronomy and physics, or mathematically it could be expressed like this
Astrology = Astronomy – Geology
For me this proves the most important thing about your theories: They belong to the past.
Astrology = Bullshit.
Astronomy = Real science.
Geology = Real science.
It is a simple as that.