Posted on by Jón Frímann

Special Report: Update 2 on the eruption in El Hierro

This is a special report on the eruption in El Hierro. This is also a good time (as any) to announce that I plan to write about volcanoes in Canary Islands in the future. As I plan on moving to the Canary Islands in about 10 years time (no reason to start late on this). But I have already induced the Canary Islands volcanoes into my personal watch system. But I have my own personal system to watch volcanoes in Iceland and now Canary Islands. However, Canary Islands are not part of my personal emergency system until I move to Canary Islands.

Update to the name of this blog is going to happen soon, but I am not sure when. But I am going to move in a about 10 years time (going to live in Denmark until that happens). Until then, they are going to go into special report group and only major events are going to be blogged about. Please note that this might change if I move earlier to Canary Islands then I now plan.

******

The eruption in El Hierro volcano continues today, as it did yesterday. But the strength of the eruption appears to have dropped today from what it was yesterday. But this does not mean that the eruption is over. It just means that the current fissure that is erupting is about to close up, mostly due to the material that it has been ejecting into the ocean floor. That means a new fissure or vents is about to open up somewhere. When and where is impossible to know. But this is the nature of volcanoes that erupt in this manner, but El Hierro is a shield volcano [second link here]. Good examples are Krafla volcano and Vestmannaeyjar Island volcano. Both of those volcanoes are in Iceland.

Today around 14:20 UTC there was a sharp tremor drop in El Hierro. This means that the magma flow dropped in the current eruption fissure. This also means that if the pressure is not enough that fissure is going to stop erupting. Because of this has happened a new fissure or a vent should be expect at any time as I have told before. When and where that might happen is impossible to know, as that outcome depends on where the magma finds its pathways inside the volcano. There might not be any earthquakes before this happens, as the rock is unlikey to be hard enough to make them. Some small earthquakes might happen if the rock layer is hard enough. Today few deep earthquakes have been recorded. This means that new magma is getting into El Hierro volcano from the mantle (where no earthquakes happen). This also means that this eruption might take place for some time now. But it is impossible to know for how long, as there might be a lot of magma flowing up from the mantle it self and up to El Hierro volcano.


The harmonic tremor and the drop in the harmonic tremor today. Copyright of this picture belongs to Instituto Geográfico Nacional.

Many people have been wondering why this eruption has not been seen. The fact is that depth drops quiet fast around El Hierro Island. Around 4 km out the depth is close to 1.5 to 2 km, it is only close to the island that the depth starts to get shallower. At the moment is is hard to say what happens next in this eruption on El Hierro. But more vents should be expect to open up then have already have.

I am going to update this blog post if anything changes in El Hierro volcano eruption.

592 Replies to “Special Report: Update 2 on the eruption in El Hierro”

  1. BAD NEWS :
    We just have published the following news :
    Data update 13/10 – 13:57 UTC : Our dreams will finally not come true! What happened? The French cableship Leon Thevenin was making cable inspection trips for the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica. Telefonica, aware of what looked as a unique way of using the technology aboard the ship, offered the ship to the authorities. However …. negotiations (probably to charter the ship) did not deliver result as the ship is owned by a consortium of France Telecom, Portugal Telecom and Telefonica and talks were broken off.

    WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT FOR SCIENCE!

    Instead … another ship, the Profesor Ignacio Lozano, will leave this afternoon from the Taliarte port (Gran Canaria). BUT, THIS SHIP IS NOT EQUIPPED WITH ROV’s ! The ship will arrive in the eruption waters early tomorrow morning and will take images and water samples The news has been confirmed by sources close to the “Instituto de Ciencias Marinas”

    2. From what I hear, the problem may have to do with the insurance company, which is understandable as this is a private ship, not a state owned. I hope they find a solution, I’m surprised they dont have any oceanographic research ship in the area, these events are unique opportunities for science.

  2. much activity in and around Spain:
    13:42:51 36.5592 -8.6072 20 2.4 mbLg GOLFO DE CÁDIZ
    12:32:39 37.9853 -2.4602 11 2.5 mbLg NW PUEBLA DE DON FADRIQUE.GR
    13/10/2011 11:15:51 38.0675 0.5089 12 3.5 mbLg MEDITERRÁNEO-CABO DE PALOS
    13/10/2011 07:01:12 35.6142 -10.0337 30 2.0 mbLg SW CABO DE SAN VICENTE

    1. Excellent! Seems location chart from yesterday (in El Pais) were wrong. Site is further off, also confirms drifting to south west – and behaves much like smoke – seems now to me there opened more vents about 14:20 yesterday.

    2. Thank you Vince.
      That proves my old point. There was no eruption going on untill sometime between yesterday and today. All we have seen before that was only de-gassing.
      The green patches we have seen before is absolutly not the same as the yellow gunk we are seeing today. This is pumice gunk from an eruption.

      I bet the eruption started at 14.27 yesterday.
      Reasoning for this, yesterday at 14.00 there was no eruption (at least nothing at all visible). At 14.27 we had a huge shift in tremoring, I now interpret the decrease as pressure release. We had that enormous spike in tremoring a couple of minutes before as the magma broke through.

      2. I agree that there is a decrease in activity but the residual activity is still a very active harmonic tremor.

        Something certainly happened at around 14:30 to release some pressure but whether or not it was the “main” eruption, only time will tell – or a decent camera on the seabed.

    1. Judging from the waves that is sort of size of plume we’d expect from a wrecked tanker, not from an eruption of any size. I still reckon a fumarole’s down there, not an eruption.

  9. ..and EQ´s:
    13/10/2011 14:43:07 27.6979 -18.0660 16 1.7 mbLg W EL PINAR.IHI
    13/10/2011 14:24:09 27.7206 -18.0552 17 1.7 mbLg SW FRONTERA.IHI

  10. so what happens now? – just a short pause, or will we see some more action shortly?

  11. The MODIS image shows a plume of discoloured sea about 20km long. Just to put that into perspective this satellite omage shows aplume of oil from the Prestige oil tanker wreck about 150km long.
    http://www.seos-project.eu/modules/marinepollution/marinepollution-c02-p06.html

    I would expect a significant sub sea eruption to make a plume vastly bigger than a tanker wreck.
    IMHO the Hierro sea plume comes from a submerged fumarole, nothing more……
    …..Yet.

    2. The situations are not directly comparable, in my view. One is a spill on the surface, the other is one coming from some 500 to 1’000 meters below the surface. So we might not see how much is still below the surface.

    4. Peter:
      This is not true, any spill cannot look bigger than the area of dispersal, regardless of size under water.
      Let us say that the fissure is 100 metres wide and a couple of kilometres long, and here comes the Rub, the fissure is almost certainly trending in the same direction as the current. Then you get a dispersal pattern at the rate of the current, but with a narrow width. The width should increase with about 5 percent an hour (figure for algae). So it should be about a hundred and X when arriving at the surface, and then it increases with (100 x X) x 5%h.
      Do you see that it is almost impossible to judge size here?

  14. This is a reply to HELENA’s comment from October 13, 2011 at 07:14 but if I put it all the way up there, she might not see it.

    Hello Helena,

    Glad to hear from somebody actually living at La Restinga. What a nice surprise! Sorry for the late response (eating, shopping). Welcome here!

    Seems we have similar thoughts about Cueva de Don Justo. Please go back to http://icelandgeology.net/?p=1620&cpage=1#comments and http://icelandgeology.net/?p=1620&cpage=2#comments from yesterday Oktober 12th. You can read my comments here (about Cueva de Don Justo at 04:43 – no replies -, and “about open conduits” at 13:49). The replies to the second comment contain several interesting links to information and footage.

    My first inspiration was this one: http://myelhierro.com/en/cuevadonjusto.php . So interesting! The “cave” is a very old lava tube. I’m concerned that it is connected to the “network” under the seafloor, but remember I’m just an amateur who likes solving puzzles and problems.

    Hope you are in a safe place (take care!) and it would be great if you would share some of your experiences here – you are one of the very few with first hand information.

    CU!

    1. Could also be magma influx from beneath to reservoir / movement within reservoir is slowing down…

  16. “Eruption (or fumerole or whatever) seems to be ‘losing steam’”

    -Isn’t that the whole point of fumaroles? 🙂

    I do wonder, though, if the apparent gaseous venting that has been going on hasn’t significantly reduced the capacity for any type of ‘explosive’ eruption.

    1. Good question.

      If tremor is down because influx from beneath has slowed, then why has it slowed? Nothing more to come, or pressure in the reservoir as high as pressure from beneath?

      1. Next step? Building of a main vent for decent eruption? Or whole thing stabilizing and shutting down. We would feel quite fooled… 🙂

      2. Plenty more magma available, I think, if quake depth is any indicator. But if a gaseous pocket had built up, then vented, that could explain why the majority of earthquakes remain relatively deep, and why the immediate subaquatic eruption seems to be winding down in some ways. If this is the case, it could be still many months before there’s sufficient magma build up to force its way to the surface.

        Or not…

    1. Is that the best proof for an eruption? BS; that was me peeing in the sea…
      Nice picture, thanks for the link.

      1. The clearest sign after 3 good days of eruption…
        By the holy sheep… Naaaaaah. Come on…

    1. A reduced signal may be a good sign; but it is still strong enough to keep a very careful eye on the situation and be very cautious.

  22. The tremor went back down almost constantly this afternoon. The government is pretty optimistic about this case. but I think that this does not mean anything. The tremor signal could increase all the time, maybe one of the vents is blocked and a possible eruption on the island or near the coast in a shallower depth could happen any time without a swarm of earthquakes before. I have also heard that the government fears that an eruption could occur much nearer to the coast which also means in a much shallower depth. If this will be the case and a new vent opens up it is possible that it creates strong phreatomagmatic eruptions, as the water could react with the magma in such a shallow depth. I think that the eruptions might go on for a while.

  23. hmm..the next one between gran canaria and fuerte…
    105243 13/10/2011 16:12:12 27.9404 -15.2335 27 2.1 mbLg ATLÁNTICO-CANARIAS

  25. Btw for all swedes here. Tonight at 21.00 on TV10.

    Naked Science.
    “Brittisk dokumentärserie från 2005. Säsong 2. Avsnitt 4 av 13. Experter studerar vulkaner för att lära sig förutspå när de ska få ett utbrott och rädda de 800 liv som de eldsprutande bergen skördar per år”

    1. There are so many good TV programs on internet and the signal is mostly very good. BUT – you may not watch if you stay in a different country. Enjoy, if you are in Sweden tonight.

  26. Data update 13/10 – 17:56 UTC : Diario de Avisos reports that the ship ‘Ramon Margalef’ currently anchored in Vigo, will navigate towards El Hierro and arrive there on Tuesday. The Ramon Margalef will carry the ROV “LIROPUS 2000”, a remotely operated vehicle able to dive to depths down to 2,000 meters.
    The “Ramon Margalef” is one of the newest ships from the ‘Instituto Español de Oceanografía”.
    The crew of the Ramon Margalef will consist of geologists, biologists and physicists.

    2. Excellent news. They will have to take great care of their expensive ROV equipment though. At least there will be some real data and observations. I was just watching Nautalus live
      http://www.nautiluslive.org/
      and was debating whether to ask them to pop over to the Canaries to help out! I guess their insurance company and owners wouldn’t be too keen to send their ROVs into that possibly hot and gaseous brew!!!

    1. those rocks in palm of hand at end don’t look like any volcanic rock type i can think of, anybody translate what is being said at end of the video about them ???

      1. Joining in Robert’s demand. Do they say these are the undeniable proof for an eruption? What exactly are these stones? I can’t recognize anything I know, but the picture isn’t “full HD”…

      2. Carl le Strange yesterday suggested they looked like bauxite. Did a bit of research on how bauxite is formed :-
        What is it and where is it formed? Bauxite is not a mineral, but a rock with minerals in it. Bauxite is a sedimentary rock that is an aluminum ore. It is formed in weathered volcanic rocks.

        So that sounds pretty likely to me, check calcified bauxite on google images and you will see a mineral with that white colour.

      5. Thanks a lot. But “feels” weird. And the black parts? And the time for the formation of bauxite starting from the primary material?
        These stones the women holds in her hand are bauxite proving the eruption from 3 vents in the last 3 days?
        Geeeeeez my learning curves is extremely steep the last 2 days…

      6. I don’t know how long it would take to form but if the material is from the seabed in an area where volcanic material has once slid into the sea it could have been thousands of years down there. I don’t suppose anyone but a minerologist would know, and I am just an interested amatuer.

      7. Thanks, was more like a rhetoric question this time. Even if it was your well thought explanation, I could not take this as satisfying evidence for an eruption.

      9. My diploma thesis was partly in sedimentology. I like that being black coral more than bauxite. But then again I’m not getting why this is the absolute evidence for lava eruption…
        Is it me being a little stubborny stupid???

      11. That is alumina, or aluminium oxide, those bands are suphuric impurities. I have pieces that look exactly like that here in my apartment that comes from Laki. That is of definite volcanic origin, BUT, there is no way to decide how old they are. They could have ejected in any previous eruption and gotten dislodged now.

    2. They say it’s “black coral” (coral negro) and is a sign of eruption. I do not know what it means. I’m also skeptical.

      1. I am still perplexed by the significance of the stones.
        The nearest I ever got to Bauxite was in Jamaica. There it was reddish. I have looked at Calcined specimens on line and to me these samples could possibly be this. Would calcined bauxite float?
        Would they be washed up onto a beach that quickly when the current appears to be taking disturbed sediments away from the island?
        As a biologist I have looked at the possibilities of it being Black coral (Antipathidae) or more likely to occur , False black coral, (Gerardia savaglia.) This latter is interesting as the polyps can and do often make the colony “skeleton” by incorporating pieces of sand or small pieces of rock So it could be false black coral with a skeleton of bauxite particles from already eroded volcanic rocks.?
        However
        I feel the white part of the specimens appear to be too crystaline for “dead bits” of coral.
        Without actually handling the specimens it is impossible for me to identify them correctly. …. and I am still not sure why they prove an eruption has taken place unless they were fished out of the sea in the discoloured area.

  28. Guess they could use a vessel with sonar to detect the amount og lava pillowing up on the seabed during this eruption.

  29. Not stone, black coral. That these have broken off is an undeniable sign an eruption has taken place, they say.

    (In another piece I read this is a breeding ground for a certain type of delphin – what if they have broken off some of the corals while fleeing the storm that unsettled?)

    Teideano mentioned in a tweet that locals have seen more ‘manchas’ (stains) appearing on the surface of the sea, closer to the island. Has anyone seen any confirmation of that yet?

    1. And why shouldn’t massive degassing loosen some stones around the vents?
      Thanks so much for all this info Xana!

      1. If black coral I would think it is the dead part of the coral that has the black colour so that also is a likely explanation. Only problem I couldn’t find a picture of black coral with that amount of white in it, but then neither had I heard of black coral until today and the locals surely have and would no doubt be able to identify it well.

      2. I love this blog for all the learning opportunities. I am retired but still love learning new things.

      3. Always good to have more experienced ones cooling us younger down. Thanks for your infos and ideas.

      4. Don’t care to much for the look. Local specificities and surrounding of the coral or whatever. But has nothing to do with black = dead part. Let’s trust the locals on this. Doesn’t change anything to this being NO valid proof of erupting lava.

      5. I am not a biologist, but I found this description in spanish:
        http://herramientas.educa.madrid.org/animalandia/ficha.php?id=3429

        It says that it is a type of coral with very dense structures and dark (black) colour of the coral skeleton. It grows at least 30m deep or deeper. It is also endemic for this part of Atlantic: Madeira, Azores, Canary Islands, west Sahara, etc.

        I suppose the black/white stones that they showed was dead coral though – sediments of the skeleton of corals long ago dead.

  30. Let me resume the eruption evidence situation:
    After something like 80 hours of erupting with the volumes and energies we saw accumulate, we have some sea water colored by sulfur (sheep-pee compared to an average oil tanker leakage), some waves (nothing that impressive though) and 2 pieces of broken black coral.
    Now the tremor drops for 2 hours and we go back to normal, as the last 80 hours has let out what had to be to stabilize it all…
    Yeeeeah, sure…
    I’m just leaning back now, waiting and watching. Obviously the only thing left to do… 🙂

    1. ..and I can go to bed some minutes earlier and sleep a little longer…last days I must check first some pieces of news before going to work and there I have no chance to go online…

      Good night!

    3. Wathing the figure of tremorchart brings something to mind; a hydraulic cylinder under load, but no oil in it, you put oil pump running(tremor rises quite rapidly), and open bleeding valve, when oil starts spitting out, you shut valve–>revs of the pump goes down(tremor drops, with a few bumps), and pressure starts to build and after a while load stars to rise….(to be continued 😉 )

  31. I’m just gonna shut down this mobile communication device. Thanks all for providing so much nice reading today.
    I still say, as I did Monday, eruption start somewhere from Wednesday (…) to Saturday, very near to if not even on the island (old pathways).
    If I’m wrong it will be a pleasure to learn where I thought sheepy. All you guys’ comments will be very helpful in this matter. Extremely nice community here.
    Good night!

  32. Ursy: Corals in your hand are always dead. But the being black has nothing to do with dead.
    Cool Info. This mystery is solved. 🙂

    1. No, black doesn’t have anything to do with dead directly, except that it is the skeleton of the coral that is black and you only see that if there is no live coral around, so the coral has to be dead. 😉
      I am not saying this eruption killed the corals though, what i think they mean is that the stones that they showed are sedimented layers of black corals from many years ago, sandwiched between other rock types (what is the white stuff?) and now they are brought up to the surface by being loosened from the seabed by gas/eruption/whatever.

      Btw, a cute swiss version of my name, is it? 🙂

  33. So, looks like my hunch was “about there”, it’s only degassing now.

    And the poor spanish geophysicists either do not recognize the situation, or they have been told to shut up by the politicians about the real facts…

    I expect the tremor to stay, or even diminish occasionally, as the volcano builds pressure for the real eruption. I just hope it does not start with plenty of small quakes and sudden burst of activity above the sea level during the night.

    Ok, when? Well, it depends… It can be next week, or it can be in November, or after the New Year, or…

    1. “….. told to shut up by the politicians…”
      I think you could be right. Looking at the IGN site we see this:
      http://www.02.ign.es/ign/layoutIn/acercaFunciones.do
      Ther’s no mention that I can see of research (‘investigacion’), no named staff.
      The IGN looks totally unlike a university web site. So I rekcon thay are all civil servants – bound to say only what they are permitted to by their superiors.

      Odd we have not heard from any academics….you’d think they’d be offering their insights. Anyone found any blogs from them?

      1. That would be Dr Erik Klemettis blog at Wired.
        He and Boris Behncke there are 2 of the 3 best that are not Icelandic, the third being Sturkleton the Confuser (Sturkel).

  34. Can’t we find another volcano to watch? – I’m already adicted to this blog…
    On the other side, maybe I finally get some sleep

    1. Hi Old Cowboy –

      We usually obsess over Katla a lot, and Carl’s fave is Hekla, he thinks she will be the next to blow. So during the “Icelandic quiet time” — is that an oxymoron? — you might want to read up on those two, it will come in handy later!

      1. I though lost out on it being the next to erupt, I thought that she would go before Grimsvötn. But there I was wrong. I do not think I will be wrong again.
        I have made a bet that I will stand infront of the Hekla Dalek Cam and eat BBQ my hat if Katla erupts before Hekla.
        Now the legend has grown into that I will be nude, dancing with feathers sticking out of my arse… Latest development on the bet is that GeoLoco will be there dancing together with me, also starkers. And then someone added sheep to the idyllic scene, and now we even have a driver that will take us there.
        It will probably be the most covered thing in eruption history…

      2. he he, this is another part I like with this blog – many of you guys obviously have “talked a lot”, and have good humor.

      3. Some of us are fairly crazy…
        One of these days we should try to have a volcano party somewhere. I haven’t just come up with how and where we could do it.
        Problem is just that people live all over, and not all of them can afford a ticket to Iceland as an example.

      4. I’m in – Iceland is perfect, horses are good, and anymore it’s nice that they are so small, hurts less when I fall off 🙂

      5. Well, there you have an idea. I always fall of them. 🙂
        We will have to set something up for the summer, if Jón get his travelling affiliate program up before then could make a lot of money on it.
        I just hope some Icelander has an Icelandic monster 4×4 and can hoist the crate-pallat of beer up the volcano of our choosing.

      6. And so the legend of Monsieur L’Étrange becomes even stranger…

        Somehow I cannot imagine Carl + sheep as an “idyllic” scene. I just hope that you are not secretly plotting to BBQ the sheep,Carl!

      8. I know, I have been watching Jon’s comments since last year. When Katla started “burping” I found out that there was more to it than that, i.e. this blog, which is very interesting.

      9. Now Old Cowboy Don’t you let Geo and Carl Lure you into their bad habits or you will be also dancing Naked with the sheep and the Dalek…….
        There again Carl, until this latest post, I was unaware that Geo had volunteered to accompany you…..
        Hmmmmm!
        Let’s hope the weather is better than today’s when the great Burfel Strictly Come dancing competition starts

      10. Did you miss that, we even have a local Icelander that will drive us up, and supply the sheeps.
        I think it will end up with it becoming the first annual Jóns blog party…

  35. While el Hierro is dormant I’ve got a few questions for you “proper folk” out there:
    – Is there a decent chance Hekla will make a go at killing sheep again during the next few years?

    – What is the other most interesting volcanos @ earth at the moment? Why?

    – What is the best measures for following Katla and Heklas activities? (Currently following tremor plots at ESK, SNB and GRF, strain at BUR + Jon’s seismo)

    – Why are we (or rather “you”) mainly discussing Katla + el Hierro and not the other Volcanos who are actually at it as we speak (example: somewhere in Japan) …

    Would be nifty if somebody bothered answering my questions 🙂

    Note: Currently reading “Volcanoes – Global Perspectives”, by. John P. Lockwood & Richard W. Hazlett. Brilliant & informative book, highly recommended! At least for us lay people with no professional background in Volcanism and its related fields.

    Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Volcanoes-Global-Perspectives-John-Lockwood/dp/1405162503

    2. “Why are we (or rather “you”) mainly discussing Katla + el Hierro and not the other Volcanos who are actually at it as we speak (example: somewhere in Japan) ”
      Sorry Tor, I don’t know the answer to your other questions but for this one I think the thing I like most is the anticipation of the eruption, the will it, wont it, part. Also the interest in watching the tremors rise (or fall 🙁 ) and all the links to interesting web pages. Once it erupts it is exciting to watch but the anticipation is lost.

    3. Hekla will erupt very soon. Just so you know, Hekla is kind of “my” volcano, I have actually read every scrap of paper ever written about it, and tried to understand it for 2 years now.
      Hekla is filled to twice “the topping off volume” it had before the 2000 eruption. IMO has put out 2 warning of imminent eruption for her, the first in 2006, the other in July 6 this year.
      There is a lot of borehole transients, believed to be precursors of imminent eruption. There has also been reports of occasional sulphur smell (sure sign), water coming and going in creeks.
      All of this, fancy math, and a lot of other I have done with the data has led me to give this prognosis for Hekla:
      Hekla will most likely erupt between 2011 december and may 2012 with a statistical certainy of 90 percent, largest probability is mars/april.

      So, Hekla is the most likely volcano to go in the near future. Much more likely sofar than Katla for instance.
      The three most likely volcanos to erupt in Iceland are (in percent):
      Hekla 51 percent
      Katla 24 percent
      Grimsvötn 19
      The rest 6 percent (with Bardarbunga at 4%)

    4. Tor Hogne

      “- Is there a decent chance Hekla will make a go at killing sheep again during the next few years?”

      Yes. If you will pole at Carl a bit he will elaborate as to why Hekla is a volcano in it’s own class. Not fully a stratovolcano, not fully “just a fissure row.” Hekla can go from sleepy – sleepy to run like hell in about 60 minutes. (of which you get about 10 to 15 minutes warning if you are up there walking around)

      “- What is the other most interesting volcanos @ earth at the moment? Why?”

      El Hierro, Hekla, Katla, Grimsvotn, Hengil, Bardobunga.

      Because I can get somewhat fine-grained seismic info on them and can plot that. If I can plot it I stand a chance of getting a better understanding if it.

      (Currently following tremor plots at ESK, SNB and GRF, strain at BUR + Jon’s seismo)

      I never have been fond of the Icelandic tremor plots. Too much room for subjective interpretation. They are great for longer range trending over periods of several minutes but near instantaneous data changes get lost as the traces overwrite each other, leaving a morass of pixels that make little sense.

      “- Why are we (or rather “you”) mainly discussing Katla + el Hierro and not the other Volcanos who are actually at it as we speak (example: somewhere in Japan)

      Lack of data. But there is a volcano in Japan that goes off rather spectacularly on a semi regular basis. It’s fun to watch the cars swerve on the highway cam when it does that and spooks them.

      “Would be nifty if somebody bothered answering my questions”

      See above.

      2. Was supposed to be “poke” but a pole or stick is used for that… so functionally is was close, if semantically incorrect.

        Say. where is that lexical tyrant?

      3. I think he disapeared after I started grammatice your Lurkical words like “hork” and “boseg”. Or it was because we got irrate and asked he/she to stop. I guess the person is still here somewhere under a different name.

    5. Hi Tor 🙂
      – Why are we (or rather “you”) mainly discussing Katla + el Hierro and not the other Volcanos who are actually at it as we speak (example: somewhere in Japan)

      Dr Erik Klemetti Has a really good Blog similar in ethos to This Blog
      http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/eruptions
      He has a very comprehensive collection of web Cam links to volcanoes world wide. The blog discussions there are very interesting and there are some internationally well known volcanologists who participate in discussions there. It’s very informative on many levels.
      Jon’s Blog specialises in Icelandic volcanoes and earthquakes. As each volcano in Iceland is very different in behaviours and the geology there is complicated and very fascinating, concentrating on this one area (mostly) has enabled me to learn steadily thanks to the very good access allowed to the IMO site and data.
      When not a lot is happening in Iceland we sometimes stray to where things are happening… like El Hierro. This helps us to learn even more.
      I also like sheep and am waiting for the dancing in front of the webcams by certain revered members of the posting community.

      1. I too am looking forward to views of the Blogs aniversary party.

        Please book a day when the web cams are working, it is not misty, raining or snowing so we get a great view of the party and the volcano.

        Cheers!

      3. Aaah, i will come too. But we decided that we go next year not to Iceland, because this year was a little expensive. We are driving with a 4×4 around all the volcanos (Eyja, Katla, Hekla, Grimsvötn, Krafla) hopeing to see something going on. One day before we start, the bridge was gone and I’m following this blog all around iceland, sure that I know what’s going up under my feet, if somebody could know it.

        So, if there is a chance, maybe next year again…?

  36. @Jon Frimann;

    I posed a question to on the other blog about why you feel the eruption sites are shutting down and getting ready to relocate … I was thinking/understanding that in a rift like eruption, one of the vents will be eroded and be enlarged by the tremendous pressure/temperature and abrasive characteristics of the eruptite until it becomes the dominant eruptive site (like Heimey (sp?)) , unless lava/ flow/dykes move down-slope to a more gravitationally favourable eruptive site ..

    please illuminate me ..

    1. I give you a point here Robert, at Heimaey that is exactly what happened.
      I guess Jón is reasoning that this will work as the rifting eruption at Krafla, where the rifts opened up, went for a while before they started to loose momentum and closed up. Then waited a while, new fissure opened up towards the east, and so on and on…
      Every eruption at Krafla was smaller and shorter in intensity.

      My ten cents.
      It will either be Heimaeyish, or Kraflish. And we wont know for a while which it will be. If it continues for a long time we will see that the most active spot will start to evolve like Heimaey and become a main vent. Or if it diminishes and dies out, is quiet for a while and goes off at a new site, then it is Kraflish.

      I will here just for the hell of it give a third option… The main went will form a fissureshaped central volcano that looks a bit like a stratovolcano. It will start to erupt quite often since it is the onset of a more active period as El Hierro is the current center of the hotspot. It will for the next 1000 years erupt about every 30 years. It will erupt very explosively first, and then go to flanking fissure eruption with medium sized flood basalts. I call this “The Birth of La Heklaeira Volcano. Just taking your analogue to a Hekla version of fissure volcanos. Very unikely since Hekla is the only volcano of its type.

      1. Hekla is not the only one, but it is one of a very few.

        “Callaqui” in Chili is another

      2. Yes Callaqui is pretty close to Hekla in that it is a fissure volcano.
        But, it is not hotspot rifting volcano, it is a Ring of fire subduction driven volcano, that makes it very different in all other ways.

      3. i agree with you on the first point, if material flow slows down or stops, the vent will have a chance to plug, requiring(maybe?) a new vent location if pressure rebuilds …

    2. The eruption vents fill up with material. That blocks the move of the magma up to the surface. This forces the magma to find a new pathways. The best example of that I have seen was in last years Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption. After few weeks of eruption on Fimmvörðuháls the original craters stopped erupting because they had filled up with eruption material.

      So a new fissure did open and allowed the magma to flow freely up to the surface again. That remained for few weeks before the pressure on the magma was to great for the current pipes in Eyjafjallajökull volcano where unable to transfer all the magma up the surface. So a new pathway was found.

      The rest of that is a well known history.

      This is also going to happen in El Hierro volcano. But with different settings and outcomes.

  37. Now that everyone has swung over to my theory of it only being de-gassing, I will now do a 180 against the swarm.

    That proves my old point. There was no eruption going on untill sometime between yesterday and today. All we have seen before that was only de-gassing.
    The green patches we have seen before is absolutly not the same as the yellow gunk we are seeing today. This is pumice gunk from an eruption.

    I bet the eruption started at 14.27 yesterday.
    Reasoning for this, yesterday at 14.00 there was no eruption (at least nothing at all visible). At 14.27 we had a huge shift in tremoring, I now interpret the decrease as pressure release. We had that enormous spike in tremoring a couple of minutes before as the magma broke through.

    1. Watch for clusters of earthquakes on the Rekjanes peninsula usually on Fridays – its when their geothermal power station injects water into the hot rocks 3km down!

      1. As far as I now there is a moratorium on the pumping into Hengill set by the IMO.
        As you have noticed there has been a silence from there since the meeting with the townspeople, IMO, Landmannavarnir and the Energy Department of Iceland… IMO was behorkingly angry I’ve heard.

  40. @Jón:
    What is the ETA of your flight booking affiliate program?
    I need to start booking the next round of flights very soon. I am kind of holding back right now.

    1. I am still trying to work out that web page. I can’t make heads and tails of it yet. So I am going to figure that out and then setup the ads. That might take some time. So just book your flight.

  41. I think you could extract some information about El Hierro if you watch older eruptions in Canary Islands.
    For example
    – Timanfaya. (Lanzarote 1730)
    – San Juan ( La Palma 1949)

  42. Carl, could do with having an off site conversation with you about Norrbotten, Volcanoes, Mining, Gold, Bears and film making at some juncture. Don’t know how we go about that though.
    We ca exchange emails via Jon I guess.

  43. The EQs are deep today, back on the central focus, nothing big, and not many of them, just adding to the thousands already there. The deformation has stabilised, not diminuished, despite three day of tremor. In comparison with the volume of magma down there I think the tremor and sub-sea release of ‘something’* are a very minor event. The most shallow EQS were 8km deep, with very few above that. If we see EQS getting shallower then if I were living there I’d want to see an organised voluntary effort scourin the island daily for signs of fumarolic activity on the island, especially the central area overlying those thousands of EQs.
    There is none there now, so new activity will be easy to spot.

    (* Why no samples? No air-sea rescue helicopter dangling a brave volcanologist on a cable with a sampling grab/bottle? Perhaps we should offer Prince William’s?)

    1. Nothing new. It is interesting that every time a volcano on the planet “erupts”, they write a new round about Katla.
      She is on a run up for an eruption, but the thing is when… Might be anywhere from in 3 months to fifty years. We have just heard the opening theme…

  45. Muesli, as long as that means info before fitness paraphernalia then I do…though it was a bit of a surprise. Will be in touch…probably tomorrow.

  48. As I understood that – following Carl : Was not green the gas (esp. sulfur dioxide) and the grey colour now is indicating input of volcanic pumice due to eruption?

    1. That was exactly what I meant, too. Such a big difference from one day to another. Wonder how it looks today, the grey colour might have reached the beach by now.

  50. @Jack

    Nick and Carl’s exchange from earlier reminded me, did Jon ever forward you the contact info?

      3. Jon did not send to me any contact info for Lurking, nor do I know that Jon did it for me to Lurking. So, if you Carl could send my info to Lurking?

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