Posted on by Jón Frímann

A ML3.7 (automatic size est.) earthquake happens on Reykjanes, close to town called Grindavík

A earthquake that had the automatic size of ML3.7 did happen at 22:14 UTC on the Reykjanes. This earthquake was only 2.6 km away from a town in called Grindavík. The earthquake was felt well in town according to reports that I got over Facebook.


The ML3.7 (automatic size) earthquake location. Copyright of this picture belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

So far no aftershocks have happened where the main earthquake took place. But that might change at any time.

290 Replies to “A ML3.7 (automatic size est.) earthquake happens on Reykjanes, close to town called Grindavík”

  2. The tide seems to have a very visible effect on the ALF SIL station. Comes twice a day (morning, evening). At least i think that is what causes the regular increase/decrease on the high frequency band.

    The earthquake like spikes every second hour? Still an enigma. 😉

  5. @Jon, email me your contact info. I can donate spare hard drives to your project, and even help you with setting up a data-backup system to prevent loss like this even though you loose drives.

    1. This is just my main computer. I am going to buy a new hard drive soon. I just need to figure out what I need.

      But I am thinking of going for 2Tb hard drive now.

      I want to have an special backup computer and use rsync to back up from it. But at the moment. That is not going to happen any time soon.

      Also, while I live in Iceland I have to pay custom duties of all that I get from other countries. But that is not going to be a issue after I move back to Denmark. So if you want to donate hardware, it is has to wait until I move back to Denmark.

    1. Well actually that seems even more irregular than “just” the inflation. If the inflation was caused by intruding magma where did it go? And to be honest it will now be even more interesting to see in the next few days how the plot will tur out. It seems to have taken to a very rapid downtrend.

      And yes I know that no conclusions can be drawn from a single data point and that this migh be a computer error but still, deserves to be monitored. 🙂

      1. If I didn’t have horrible stomach pain I would start to get ready to dance and sing “nä, nä nää-nää” by now 🙂
        If it really was up, the last few days could have been equipment, it went somewhere, in my eyes probably into Grimsvötn. That transfer was probably the harmonic tremor that Jón spotted.
        I guess it will continue to go down. SKRO was the only one going up after the eruption, and only the last few days.

  8. @Lurking
    Thanks again for another excellent Plot. I wish I could find a decent program (free!) so I could have a play about with some plots ,when I have some spare time on a wet afternoon! Lurking I appreciate the time you put into this. Have you any advice on what are good programs to use Please.
    I see what Carl means about Hengill. I have found it difficult to imaginatively overlay Lurking’s plot on a relief map and to chase the co ordinates from the plot to map. Please tell me if I have got my co ordinates hopelessly wrong! (I am still learning where places and volcanoes are).
    To me it looks like the Grimsnes Area and all around Thingvallavatn lake are very active. These I take would be more tectonic than volcanic.
    I am interested in the North South line of quakes at roughly 64N 20 40 W. Where exactly is this please?Is there any surface indication of this activity?Is it following a paticular fault line?
    Is the dense cluster on the Reykjanes Peninsular centred around Krisuvik? Are these too mostly tectonic?
    I wait with interest to see how you Icelandic experts interpret Lurking’s Plot.

    1. Ploting…

      Well, you need some sort of spreadsheet program, and enough skill with it to wrangle data. (import and shoehorn it into something usable)

      If it can spit out a csv file, you can import those datapoints into DivaGIS. (thats the one I use for plots that are map like… you know, country outlines and such)

      DivaGIS is free.

      As for spreadsheets… MS Excel is what I use, but Open Office has a really nicely featured spreadsheet application, and Open Office is pretty free.

      Most of what I plot with is done with Dplot. It’s not free, but it has a less feature version called Dplot Jr. Not exactly sure what it’s capabilities are, but I see people asking for advice on it quite a bit and the developer answers their questions just a cheerfully as he does mine. (full version)

      If you want to get totally nuts and really beat on the data with full powered statistical tools, the R programing language is also free. It can make plots that will make some researchers swoon. The language is specifically geared towards statistical data work. I have a version and am still mulling over whether I want to try and learn a new language. I have some Perl and Php experience, (CGI stuff mostly) but it’s been a while… but not as long ago as when I was putzing around in 6808 / 6502 / x86 assembly languages.

      Don’t be put off on R though, from what I’ve seen of it it’s much more user friendly than any of the other stuff. It just requires a bit of knowledge about program flow and how statistics work. That way you know what you are trying to tell the program what to do.

      http://www.diva-gis.org/

      Note: there is also a link at DivaGIS for free shapefiles.

      http://www.r-project.org/

      http://www.openoffice.org/

      http://www.dplot.com/index.htm

  9. 18.08.2011 11:47:22 65.019 -16.656 4.0 km 1.4 76.06 3.2 km SW of Dreki

    Your favourite Volcano Carl! 😀

  10. @ Carl
    I hope you feel better soon.
    Maybe a nice anomaly somewhere will take your mind off your pain.

    1. I went to see my favourite female football-team yesterday and had a sausage…
      For those of the american handball persuasion; I was at a soccer game 🙂

      @Sam:
      Askja is actually my fourth favourite volcano.
      I order them like this:
      Theistareykjarbunga
      Hekla
      Hengill
      Askja
      Theistareykjarbunga is my personal favourite, and I have to admit that it is just because something as silly as my heartfelt wish to hear Amanpour at CNN trying to say the line “Here we see the eruption at Thurdle’eek’bung” or some such… 🙂 I know, small things make me happy.

      1. You don’t need to wait that long: I can send you a recorded message of me trying to say it. 🙂

      2. Haha, thank you, that brightened my day! 🙂
        Or, I just go to Rio, considering the weather today it might be a much better idea.
        It is ten degrees, raining and so cloudy that it is almost dark outside. And my neighbours are BBQ-ing. The world has as usuall gone mad.

      3. You’re mostly welcome! Albeit we are in the middle of the winter, the max temperatures are above 30º C and the weather is gorgeous, crystal clear sea waters and pleasant cool (15°c) nights.
        But no time to enjoy it here… 🙂

      5. Now really Carl, Theistareykjarbunga is a very long word, but all of the individual sounds are pretty easy for an Anglophone to wrap their mouth around. It doesn’t have those daunting sounds that just pile up the consonants. I put Theistareykjarbunga into Google translate and hit listen a couple times to try it out — pas mal! On the other hand, Eyjafjallajökull was a whole different animal. It took me about four days of practice to be able to rattle it off. I used to watch the newscasts and laugh at the commentators. Most of them just gave up and called it “the Icelandic volcano” (as if there was only one!). Those those who persevered seemed to settle on something like ” Eyja-full-awful”, which was actually pretty funny because it sounded like “Eyja feels awful” — which she probably did!
        BTW – does Theistareykjarbunga mean something like “place of the smokey bulge?”

      6. I have heard three anglophones (by the way, are you from a french speaking country? I have only heard the word anglophone used there.) trying to pronounce with rather spectacular results. Thurdle’eek’bung was the closest I could write it as.
        Might be that you are just better at languages?

      7. Good observations. I am a native speaker of American English, but I teach French and have cumulatively spent about five years of my life in France. I am perhaps “good” at learning romance languages, but it’s probably more a case of just putting in a lot of effort. My latest interest is taking Icelandic words apart to try to figure out what they mean, and how they might be pronounced. For the latter, Google’s “listen” feature is my ally. I think that many English speakers don’t even try to pronounce foreign words.. They just say some English sounds that have some of the same letters and end up sounding ridiculous. Ethnocentricity?

    1. I am not sure, but I think that is a different type of strainmeter, so it reacts a bit different, but the curve is on general trend with the others except Burfell. And it is the trend that is important.
      But it is looking odd 🙂

      2. Carl, I presume the sausage was the cause of your pain not your favourite football team!

        I Just came back and I too saw that quake and was surprised not to find it on IMO map.
        Jon has neighbours that slam car doors!

      3. Well, the game ended 2-2 so they lost the series lead… I think it is the combination of sausage and that 😉

        I guess that the Icelandic weekend started early and that was the dude that owns the cottage who opened the beer kegg.

  13. Please note that I am always going to curse out load when a hard disk dies on me. The hard drive in question is not directly part of my earthquake and volcano watching. But it was part of my main desktop computer, where I do my volcano and earthquake watching.

    But it still bad that I lost this hard drive. Since now I have to buy a new one and that not so cheap to do so. I want 2TB hard disk, but they cost 14.950. ISK cheapest ($130.91, 91.10€, 678,65DKK current exchange rate). I am have to figure something out money wise on this issue. As I am trying to save some money now.

    But in any case, I am going to make up my mind next week. When the school has started and I have moved to a town called Sauðárkrókur.

  14. It seems that Icelandic Met Office has changed the scales on the tremor plots. Now it shows each day with hour markers. Rather then every other day with no hour markers.

    1. So they did, it is quite visible of one compares with the out of order SIL at Krisuvik. That one is still unchanged.
      I hope they fix Krisuvik soon.

  15. I have found this series of data for the accumulative earthquakes and also strain measurements etc for the Myrdalsjokull area. These pages allow you to examine previous years data too.
    I compared last year’s data and the year before’s and the Myrdalsjokull numbers are steeply climbing similar to 2010 when Eyaf… erupted.
    Can anyone more expert than I am interpret this data please?
    To me it looks that it is showing pre eruptive behaviour? http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/myr/myr_num.html
    http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/myr/myr_str.html#img

    1. Very interesting indeed.
      I have always been a friend of cumulative seismic plots. They say more than anything else really (for seismic volcanos).
      For instance, it was apparantly in the mid nineties that Eyja got ready for her eruption.
      Otherwise it has almost all the time been Godabunga that has been the leader of seismic buildup. It is not climbing as steeply as before Eyja, the scale is different, and the months are a bit compressed since the year is not over.
      But it is interesting that Myrdalsjokulsaskja (I guess that is a weird name for Katla) is above Godabunga in action.
      We will see what happens there, but I would like to say that it is still a lot more action needed before she has had as much run-up as Eyja had. But, as we learnt from Grimsvötn, cumulative seismic trends can go up really really fast.
      It is still Godabunga that is scary. The amount of cumulative seismic buildup is vastly larger then Eyja and Askja combined during that time-span. If and if so, when, she goes off it will probably be the event of a lifetime. But, it might be hundreds of years away still. It is after all probably the birth of a new major volcano.
      The second one is not strain as in borehole strain. Is the cumulative amount of strain release from seismic events counted in erg.

      Well, we just got a bit of confirmation that Myrdalsjokulsaskja (Katla I assume) is on the run-up to something. When is the question still. 🙂

      But Godabunga… Phew… 😉

      Nice find Diana! I had never seen those figures. Please keap on looking for more like this!

    2. This is accumulated earthquake energy in Katla volcano caldera and Goðabunga, plus few other volcanoes in this same area.

      The earthquake energy from Katla volcano caldera this year is a lot more then last year. To compare it with anything.

      2. Yes. But “Katla” is actually just a peak in the glacier. So the naming things is rather complex for foreigners to understand. But this is all the same system, regardless of names.

        Except the different volcanoes that are in this area and are on the plot also.

      1. As I have come to understand the Word “Askja” is used for “Crater” or in this case “Caldera”. So the word actually makes sence “myrdalsjökull caldera”.

      2. @daniel, the word “askja” is only used for caldera type crater in icelandic. we use the word “gígur” for a crater-type craters 🙂

      3. Ah ok. Well then i wasnt completely of target then. 😉 Just a little bit. 😉

    1. It sofar means that Myrdalsjokulsaskja (Probably means Katla) is having a restless year. Problem is that we do not know the amount of needed cumulative seismic event in the run-up to an eruption. My guess is that we need something in between the same as before Eyja eruption to ten times as much. And we are still about 1/5 to Eyja eruption. So, unless it picks up speed a lot Katla wont erupt this year, or even in a few years time. But I might be wrong.
      Godabunga though, there we have no information at all. Is that one ready for something? Here I toss my hands up in the air… 🙂

    2. Hi Christina
      I have no idea Christina! We have no real evidence how these Volcanoes behave. We are all trying to see patterns and find any information to help. Every Volcano has it’s own way of doing things! This is what makes Iceland such a challenge for vulcanologists.
      I am certainly not the person to ask. I am just an interested person like yourself. I don’t think anyone can say when or where the next eruption will happen.

    1. That is the million zlobotnik question…
      Something is happening south of Katla, but as far as I know, nobody has a clue about what.
      Someone, I do not remember who conjectured a possibility of it meaning an upcoming flanking eruption towards Vik.
      I still think it is just movement from Katla causing fracturing of the crust to the sount since that area probably are the most brittle. North Katla we have the “dead zone”, I have no clue what is to the east, and to the west is Godabunga and that bops so much that it masks anything including 1400 nude zealots dancing zumba.
      Time will tell 🙂

      1. I see only one and so far it isn’t qualified Renato, but it is deep.

        One Nude Norseman I could cope with Carl. 1400 zealots would test even my powers of stern authority 🙂
        Maybe we should stay on topic LOL.

      2. It is the deep part I disagree with… 🙂
        There is 1 or 2 a week of them, all quiet and mild-mannered and about that deep.

        My problem is that they seem to always be nude Men… I see it as a personal affront that there are not more of… well, let’s leave that be.
        I am not complaining though, I got a couple of minutes worth of a happily waving Sigrún Hreinsdottir at Thorolfsfelli-cam during Eyjafjallajökull.
        If we ever stopped bantering during these volcanic lulls it would be sad thing 🙂

      3. I would offer to keep the balance for you Carl. However I suffer with the cold and the sight of me in my red winter thermals could not compare with Miss Katla in full glory.

      4. Well, the combination would be enticing, things is just that if Lady Katla goes off before Lady Hekla I would be standing there bbq-ing my hat when you show up…
        But I guess everyone would be even happier if you where running around nude while I held a course of hat-cooking.

  19. Does it need so much, there are maybe 3 eruptions in Katla Caldera as a whole (Mýrdalsjökuls-Askja = Katla Caldera) against 1 in Eyjo – so almost there now, if 1/5th, right?

  20. Two for Eyja, and 3 for Katla since 1823 to be exact.
    One should though remember that Katla is wastly larger with a much larger magma-chamber, so it takes longer time to fill, and as such causes more quakes.
    So if we use your line of thinking we need a minimum of 2/3 of Eyja run up.
    Point is still that we need more activity, a lot of it.

    Nota bene, I do not count those unsubstantiated eruptions.

    1. Ok. I read somewhere Katla was divided into three areas (all three at same time when the Caldera formed ?) – so perhaps only needing 1/3rd of Eyja runu – and North-West area was possibly next …. From Lurking EQ plot earlier today, those South of Caldera, form line North to South (i.e. typical tetonic alignment) whilst there was barely viseble line NE-SW in middle of caldera (magmatic alignment). I did watch Eyjo buildup “Y” shaped but mostly E-West alignment (if viewed a la Birdseye on a map).

      1. Maybe the magma chamber is full or near full for katla… maybe its been slowly filling over the past decades and now all it needs is just a that little extra to cause it to burst.

      2. Not that much. It had a brief period of going up on the GPS around the time when Eyja got her first big glass of beer, and another small glass around now at Austmannsbunga. But you should remember that these kinds of volcanos are like drunkards in a bar. A small chinese women can drink very little (Eyja) before blowing chunks and a big 150 kilogram biker (Katla) drinks a hell of s lot before vomiting.
        And there are no real signs of a prolonged uplift (beer drinking).
        But get me right, Katla will most likely erupt, but it will take some time geologically speaking. Years at a minimum.

  21. I stayed in the Hostel at Vik and shot a music video at Skoga and up on Myrdalsjokul. I do hope there isn’t a lateral blast…I have fond memories of the place (very very very drunk).

  22. I think that logic falters, that would only make it even with Eyja in size, per piece.
    But the division is probably just that different parts of this massive volcano gets active at different times, it still does not make a big difference for run up.
    It would only be shorter if it was erupting at the same place as the last time. And it seems not to be doing that, if it ever erupts again.
    This time it seems to be in Austmannsbunga/caldera, so that would need a full build-up.
    Sorry, but pretty much nothing can make me believe that Katla needs less than Eyja as a run up. It in all likelyhood requires a lot more.
    From Dianas links I would say that we are a minimum of a year away, and than we still would need a lot of activity. More likely we are more than ten years away.
    I would even go so far that it is almost likelier that Godabunga will erupt before Katla, and by erupting relieving pressure enough for Katla to not erupt for a century or so.

    At a minimum I guess we will see Hekla, Grimsvötn and probably Askja (even if Krafla is a bit unrestive too) erupt before Katla at the rate she is going.
    But in 1 or 2 years time we will know more when we have more hard facts. I would keap my eyes on Austmannsbunga GPS movements north/south and east/west and Dianas wonderfully found plots of cumulative seismic moment.

    Sorry to be a party pooper, but Katla kind of is boring… Hehe!

  23. Carl, if your theory that the inflation at Hamarinn was magma and that it moved to Grimsvötn today/yesterday is correct should Grimsvötn not have inflated, instead it looks like it deflated. Could the magma not have left for the central caldera of Bardarbunga instead or perhaps just subsided downwards again (probably just temporarily)?

    Completely off topic, is magma and lava two names for the same or is there a difference?

    1. Yes, I guess that it is quite possible.
      I would not be so sure that Grimsvötn has deflated, remember that GPS-readings can fluctuate a bit due to instrumentation. I kind of tend to distrust GPS-reading if they are not consistant over a bit of time (minimum a week).
      But I happily concede the point that it might have moved from Hamarinn to Bardarbunga.

      Magma = molten rock before ejected through eruption.
      Lava = Magma after being ejected (still molten, or solidifed).
      Or extending the drunkard analogy, Magma is beer and lava is beer leaving the upper bodily orifice at speed…

      1. thanks for clearing that up 🙂

        And to the original comment I guess we will just have to see, perhaps the magma just hasn’t arrived yet at Grimsvötn.

    1. When something happens, or write about some volcano in Iceland. I am not sure yet when a new post comes out.

      I am enjoying the quiet time in Iceland for a moment.

  25. Ok, then Im not gonna sit up to wait for a new post, and Im gonna say good night to everyone 🙂

    1. Sleep tight!

      In all likelyhood there will be a new post up by tomorrow.
      Jón uttered the words that always make something happen “quiet time in Iceland”. Normally something happens then, the last time the Grindavik quakes started just a few minutes after. 🙂

      1. Deja Vu’. Its always on a Friday just after Jon says its quiet time in Iceland that something starts to happen. Thats when Grims blew and Katla had that failed eruption. Both on Friday and adjacent to Jon’s declaration of Quiet Time.

        Jon, Quiet Time and Iceland are oxymorons 🙂

      2. Last Grims was Saturday (May 21st), but otherwise I agree. Then there has to be quet times too, lets hope so.

  26. Hi guys. I was just watching the Katla-webcam, and saw this light in the clouds – moving across the screen. I took two screencaps, one in fullscreen and one regular.
    The little one is taken about 30 seconds after the large one.

    http://imageshack.us/f/834/namnlsao.jpg/

    Why would an airplane fly there? A “portable science lab”(sorry, dont know any sofisticated terms)?

      1. AW, very interesting!

        I really cannot imagine how a noctilucent cloud could be seen like that through the thick fog.

        Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud)
        says about these clouds:

        “They are normally too faint to be seen, and are visible only when illuminated by sunlight from below the horizon while the lower layers of the atmosphere are in the Earth’s shadow.”

        But if no airplane and no noctilucent cloud either, what was it then?

      1. It does not at look like aurora either, not at all. It does look like some kind of lamps shining through the fog.

  28. A earthquake did just take place. It is close to my geophone, given the signature that I am now getting on it is a decent sized earthquake.

    More information in a bit.

      2. Low period… do you mean long period? The waveform could be long period from the data on your seismograph, but I am not an expert in this field.
        Long period usually means magma injection, which is not a good sign. (I am not a volcanologist! And these are just my opinions as an interested person.)

      3. Long period earthquakes are events that happens at more then 2000 km away from my geophone that I detect.

        They are normally called teleseismic events.

        Low period earthquakes are earthquakes that are related to magma movement in volcanoes.

        This earthquake does not mean that Katla volcano is about to erupt. Just that it had a earthquake.

      4. Jón I think we are meaning the same thing when you say low period and I say long period. But we just using different terms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_of_volcanic_activity#General_principles_of_volcano_seismology gives a description of what I mean to say by long-period. Here is another description from USGS

        http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/1995/95_11_05.html
        “…long-period, or harmonic, earthquakes. These earthquakes involve the movement of a mixed gas and liquid magma through a network of cracks and fissures.

        Unlike the short-period earthquakes, they usually begin with gradual, or emergent, seismic wave arrivals with resonance, or driven oscillation.”

  29. Friday
    19.08.2011 02:28:19 63.657 -19.120 1.1 km 2.6 90.1 6.7 km ENE of Goðabunga

  30. I am going to post a analyse of this earthquake tomorrow. But I am going to keep watch now until 04:00 UTC because of this earthquake.

    But so far, everything remains quiet in Katla volcano after this earthquake.

  32. Another low-period (based on Jon’s helcorder) quake at Katla caldera.

    Friday
    19.08.2011 05:06:50 63.649 -19.329 2.3 km 1.7 90.02 4.0 km WNW of Goðabunga

      1. And that answered that one.
        Not even a 2.6 at Godabunga makes a twitch at Hekla strain-meters. But a 0,7 at Hengill makes it go crazy.

        As I said before… I would not be surprised if it was Godabunga that erupted. It is well filled with steady and high lift. It has an ernormous cumulative seismic count, constant harmonic tremor and so on… If there had even been a small piddly crater, or old fissure everyone would be going ape-shit over it.

    1. Am I right in seeing that the Eyja eruption appears to have speeded up the inflation at SOHO and GOLA?

      Details of coordinates and also some photos of the location and GPS equipment for SOHO is here (Near Jon’s interesting Spot on the southern edge of the icecap)
      http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/englishweb/gps/soho.html

      and for HVOL here
      http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/englishweb/gps/hvol.html
      I can’t seem to get info on GOLA.
      For all other GPS stations you can find them here
      http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/englishweb/gps.html

      Have fun 🙂

      1. Looking more closely at the location of SOLO it is approximately 12 km west of Vik and approx 10 KM south of the edge of the Myrdalsjokull ice cap.
        As I see it the land between The icecap and the coast west of Vik is rising slightly more rapidly than the area East of Vik at HVOL. HVOL is near where the Katla web cam is located I think.
        If anyone is more familiar with these locations please comment.

  34. It’s gonna take a bit before I get the Hengill to Hekla plot together. There are about 267,000 quakes to rummage through.

    1. Well that will keep you out of trouble for a few hours Lurking!
      Seriously. Many thanks for your time. It is greatly appreciated here.

    2. I am sorry for giving you that hell of a lot to do… I never imagined it was that much.
      But, it will hopefully give the final piece of the puzzle of the perhaps existing connection between the Hengill Sprungur and Hekla. I hope.

  35. What happened during the night?

    There seems to be a large consisten spike on mort tremor charts but there is no earthquake as far as I can see that would cause a teleseismic spike like this.

    Any thoughts?

    1. The spike is caused by the Godabunga quake. No mysteries there.
      The going up in strainmeter was normal. As long as you have the same trend for all counters it is business as usual. If Burfell goes like hell down (100 000s or more units) and all the others go up, then you have a transient that is an abortion.
      You can see them clearly afterwards on the longterm plot.
      http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/strain/str_corr/index.html

      On the long term plot they show as a much lower number. Katla 2000 moved Burfell 400 negative and the rest a 100 positive during the first hour of the eruption.
      The mega transient 5 days ago was 250 negative on Burfell and 50 plus on the others. So slightly more than half way.

  37. Be careful on this page Daniel. Many of the readings are older records up to and just after the Eyaj eruption during 2010. I think the last set of GPS readings are up to today’s date though
    http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/gps/predorb/soho_enu_p.png
    I must admit it is confusing with so many sites and readings. I have to check the dates carefully on all sets of graphs.
    Different groups of observers also use slightly different types of measurement so it makes it difficult to compare inflation rates.

    1. Yeah, I have made mistakes a lot with that one… Like when I clicked a link and saw a murderous tremor spike in Vestmannaeyjar and thought here we go again… Then someone had posted a remake of tremoring from the days, but so that it looked exactly like today tremorpage… Sigh…
      Guess who shouted wolf… Sigh…

  39. A large Quake somewhere else around the world?
    Not sure of time zones but it could be this one

    2011/08/19 05:36:33 37.673 141.716 43.6 NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

    1. No, I don’t think so. The time scale on Jóns Helicorders fits very well to the two quakes here at Godabunga:
      Thursday 19.08.2011 05:06:50 63,649-19,329 2,3 km 1,7 90,02 4,0 km VNV of Goðabungu
      Thursday 19.08.2011 02:28:19 63,657-19,120 1,1 km 2,6 90,1 6,7 km ANA of Goðabungu

      1. Definitly a nice burpy quake from Godabunga, not so odd since it is full of beer ready to be made into projectile drunkard waste-products…
        Actually fun to see how close it looked to be ready to go on the tremoring. Even Hekla showed the tremoring it caused. And the pattern of the quake on Jóns Helicorder is so amazingly like the pattern of a wet burp…
        Scary actually.

      2. Katla could at least wait for another week, since I have to go east by the end of next week. And come back.

      3. I think you are safe from Katla the next few years 😉

        I would be more worried about Hekla, even though I said it would wait untill between december and may before erupting.

        And Godabunga is a darkhorse. Definitly. Will be fun though to see if it is a new crater of Katla, or if it is an entirely new volcano. As far as I know, nobody knows for sure.
        I go with separate from Katla just out of spite 🙂

    2. I looked up Japans timezone: This is UTC+9, so the time you mentioned is UTC, which is identical to the icelandic time.

      1. I’ll repost this from above…
        The going up in strainmeter is normal. As long as you have the same trend for all counters it is business as usual. If Burfell goes like hell down (100 000s or more units) and all the others go up, then you have a transient that is an abortion.
        You can see them clearly afterwards on the longterm plot (there is though none showing now).
        http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/strain/str_corr/index.html

        On the long term plot they show as a much lower number. Katla 2000 moved Burfell 400 negative on the longterm plost and the rest a 100 positive during the first hour of the eruption.
        The mega transient 5 days ago was 250 negative on Burfell and 50 plus on the others. So slightly more than half way.

  43. Carl!

    What we should though admit Henrik is that we stink at teaching kids to do math, and we lag in hard sciences.

    We are abysmal at teaching our children everything at school. By the time Swedish kids have spent nine years in school at the leaving-age of 16, they are 3-years behind in maths, 2-2½ in science, 1-2 in languages (except English) and social studies. This is because average-Joe must NEVER be made aware of the fact that he is average Joe. Brighter kids are bored to insensibility and the less endowed happily left behind, all in the name of “equality” – as in equally badly educated – so that average Joe can feel good about himself with a complete disregard for the consequences to the nation when people aren’t allowed to live up to their potential.

    1. I think that is a general problem in Scandinavia, it sure isn’t different in Denmark i can tell you. However, I once went to school in Canada (granted it was a long time ago) but there hard science seemed to be much more in focus and differentiated teaching central (where it is no no in Denmark).

  45. Well, it’s preliminary. I managed to get it down to the 124,991 quakes. I still have an issue in getting them color coded by date due to the number of events. I will probably have to break that set down into groups manually and the layer them together.

    Meanwhile I have work to do (thank God the Federal government hasn’t killed off this part of the industry… yet).

    http://i53.tinypic.com/28rdrg9.png

    1. Yes a small swarm. Just by the lake as the other swarms has been. First swarm took place on the sothern tip of the lake if im not mistaken.

      Would be nice to see if this is magmatic or tectonic.

      And yes Carl…The hen or the egg.. 😉

      1. I would guess the swarm along Reykjanes is just stress propagation along the rift zone, started from the larger quakes earlier near Grindavík.

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