Posted on by Jón Frímann

Special report: Update 6 on the eruption in El Hierro, Canary Islands, Spain

Special note: Please notice that my (personal) watching system is also going to include the mainland of Spain (mainland Spain has two volcanoes that I am aware of, along with some earthquake activity) when I change it next month, along with Canary Islands. Everything else is also going to be a subject to a special reports if the event is important enough. That is not always going to be case however. But I am going to post more details on this in the beginning of next month.
****
Little seems to have changed in the eruption of El Hierro since my last update on it. That was on 19 October, 2011. Harmonic tremor is constant, but appears to have dropped a little in the past few days. But with the fluctuation that is often increases again before it drops down again. This means that the eruption is ongoing, but is loosing power to continue at current eruption vent. This was not unexpected. This has however not slowed down inflation in El Hierro from what I can gather on GPS data on El Hierro.

As the current eruption vents close down it seems that earthquakes have started again under El Hierro. But the earthquakes have the depth from 28 km and up to around 5 km. This strongly suggests that new magma is entering under El Hierro and is again increasing the pressure inside the El Hierro magma sill (or chamber, but note that El Hierro does not have a stable magma chamber it seems). This increases earthquakes while the magma does not have any good path up to the surface. When a new path for the magma starts to form again, a large earthquake swarm is going to take place in El Hierro. It is not going to be anything bigger then already has taken place in El Hierro already. With the largest earthquakes going up to Mb5.0 in size. That is at least my opinion.


All the earthquakes that have happened in El Hierro since magma intrusions started in July 2011. This pictures clearly shows in my view the amount of magma (in terms of size, not volume) that is under El Hierro at the moment. As it is marked on the outer layers by the earthquakes. Copyright of this picture belongs to Instituto Geográfico Nacional.


The harmonic tremor in El Hierro at midnight on 21 October, 2011. As can be seen, it fluctuates a little bit. Copyright of this picture belongs to Instituto Geográfico Nacional.

The major risk in the current eruption cycle of El Hierro is the risk that new eruption vent is going to open up nearby a human population without warning. But El Hierro has a lot of cinder cones from earlier eruption cycles. That creates the risk that a new eruption vent is going to open up on dry land without warning. But it is impossible to know when and where that might happen.

Claims that this eruption in El Hierro is going to create tsunami due to landslides are false and have no basic in fact or reality. As landslides are unlikely to happen in this eruption episode or if a eruption happens on dry land.

920 Replies to “Special report: Update 6 on the eruption in El Hierro, Canary Islands, Spain”

  1. @Armand:
    Look at this, interesting proportionality between the P & S – waves. That slip fault plane was something else in size. If it hadn’t been a slo-mo quake it would have been a competitor to the Japanese quake for this years biggest counted in energy.

  2. My comment seems to be stuck in moderation (too many links?), so I’ll try again with splitting it into two:

    Part 1:
    About rescaling, check this, I found two similar earthquakes at similar position and of similar magnitude (2.6/7), both felt on the ground (II intensity) and while the hourly spectrograms show a similar picture, the seismograms definitely don’t. So, rescaling, yes or no, what do you think?

    Before rescaling:
    1104799 12/10/2011 12:27:24 27.6665 -18.0238 13 II 2.6 4 SW EL PINAR.IHI
    http://www.01.ign.es/ign/head/volcaSenalesAnterioresDia.do?nombreFichero=CHIE_2011-10-12&ver=s&estacion=CHIE&Anio=2011&Mes=10&Dia=21&tipo=2#
    http://www.01.ign.es/ign/head/volcaSenalesDiasAnterioresHora.do?nombreFichero=CHIE_2011-10-12_12-13&estacion=CHIE&Anio=2011&Mes=10&Dia=21&tipo=2&hora=12-13

      1. OK, thx. But what do you think about the visual signal of these two earthquakes? Does it prove the rescaling?

      2. That is a really slowly progressing earthquake waveform, you can see the S & P wave separated by an hour… Wow!
        To understand, mentally compress the image to what you are used to see on Jóns helicorder.

    2. Only one not stopped is CHIE(El Hierro) wich show only small spike on 0-0,5Hz, allthogh this station has been most frecuently updated since beginning of tremors…..maybe other stations will catch up.

  4. 18 quakes at El Hierro yesterday. 17 already today, still time for a few more. Seems to me things are increasing not dying down.

      3. Hard to tell from this map, temporal resolution here is one day (i.e. each day = one colour). But perhaps Lurking could create one of his 3D plots, where colour shows the time of earthquakes?

      4. Soon as I figure out whats going on. I just now came to the conclusion that most of the ruckus is over the Kermadec quake.

        Gonna take a bit and a couple of glasses of tea and the pseudoephedrine and aspirin to kick in first.

      2. Ooh… I hope he never sees that one. Talk about deadly insults 🙂 Simple minded mayor. I see a fat Hobbit mayor sitting on a donkey before my minds eye 🙂

      3. The other lurker, I must confess to more recent Icelandic mangling…
        SvampurinnBobPkyngjabylgju
        (SpongeBobPWaveSucker) but I changed sucker into Swallower. I think… It was all Renatos fault, I promise 😉

  6. Just been reading your comments and i’m shocked and disgusted by the news that the tremor charts may have been re-scaled without notification.
    There is a good chance that this eruption is still going at full force from day one. If the authorities are doing this to protect the tourism industry on the island well they have alot to answer for.
    Usually the norm on this blog is to inform the media that its the opinion of enthusiasts and amateurs but this is one time when the media should report the dirty tactics being taken and this potentially puts lives at risk on the island.
    Sorry for the rant but if this is true well then my shock and disgust is justified.

    Keep up the good work here people.

    1. There are a lot of media people following this blog worldwide, which is very good since here these events are dealt very settle and scientific way in this blog, even as many of us (including myself) are amateurs. It is kind of sad that agencies and coverments are still withdrawing essential information from public, as they should know by now that there are only negative results of that.
      I work for a security company so i have a clue about distributing/covering up information. and as El Hierro is conserned i think there is lot of data that should be published.

    2. “…disgusted by the news that the tremor charts may have been re-scaled without notification…”

      No need to be. It’s not like we are getting a measured strength indicator from the traces themselves. What is important is to note when it occurs and to realize that it happened.

      Re-scaling is good for our purposes. A lot if info was being lost in the saturated traces and we really had no way to gage if something had changes in the up close and personal seismos data.

      Now, If I were doing a continuing data extraction of the graphic, it might be an issue, but that is labor intensive so I don’t.

      As for no notification… we are onlookers. I wouldn’t really expect a heads-up. The people making life and death decisions? Well, I would hope that they have better communications with each other than a graphic on a web page.

  7. @ Carl

    Any chance that your rock samples have come from the sea bed rather than directly from magma? Chemical reaction with whatever is in that water may make them fizz and float. If yes, they may have come from an old landslip from El Hierro, hence the weathering.

    Also if yes, we have really only seen de-gassing and so the main eruption may follow later.

    1. No, the chrystaline structure is consistant with rapid cooling. Also the rapid inflation as the gases expands the material is consistant with it being volcanic ejecta instantenously imersed (okay then, ejaculated) in water.

      1. Could this be similar with the lava at Þingvellir, where gas was most certainly present ?

    2. @Carl.

      A chemical reaction that produces aluminium oxide: “At temperatures above 1100 °C kyanite decomposes into mullite and vitreous silica via the following reaction: 3(Al2O3·SiO2) → 3Al2O3·2SiO2 + SiO2. This transformation results in an expansion.” Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyanite.

      Aluninium oxide occurs naturally as mullite and corundum. Both are intrusive igenous rocks. It is feasible that lighter components of magma have separated over time from heavier ones, especially as it is some time since El Hierro has erupted, the lighter rocks emitted now after de-gassing.

      But don’t know how that fits the EQ pattern we have seen since July 2011.

      1. KarenZ, as I have said, I am not a geologist.
        I though well know how various aluminium ores are created. In this case though I will go with what my own geologist said after actually testing the SvampurinnBobs. He explained it to me in such great length that I had to go for a whisky to clear out my brain. I think it was his way of explaining that I should not disturb him with things that are not actual ores to mine.
        So, yes you are right.
        But that does not go for the SvampurinnBobs.

  8. I am totally awed if the scientists really did scale down the tremour charts, and not telling!?? This should be verified ASAP!
    Indeed Lurking did note. I did ask , at what intensity the tremour was (comparable to IMO tremour scale (4,000, 6,000 etc) I was expecting the (4,000+) eruption to show up by this weekend (12-14 days), not only as fragments from the lava-fissure walls, picked up on way up (yes, the “Alumina~floating-bomba” are ailien to the magma, I think). But I mabe wrong, but I think so anyways. There is magma down there, nothing less, not “just gases and bubbles”. To think such is bubbles. There is similar to the “bomba” happening in Hekla Volcano eruptions – Where stray (cold) broken rocks are carried up with the initial erupting gases (mostly water vapour), and thrown like cannonshells far away from the fissures. Some of these stones were picked up in the 70s and used for analyses on finding rock layers and possible depths, i.e. how the upper crust is formed under Hekla area. Icelandic term “framandsteinar” (alien-stones) as they are not part of the magma.
    But the most serious this in “hiding” (scaling) the harmonic-tremours, is that there is likelyhood of much MORE magma has been carried into vicinity (near surface) than we can estimate. Magma carries heat. Heat in turn affects water. It expands and exerts pressure on surrounding magma, makes it more eruptiable. What happens if pressure goes over critcal value at shallow depth (less than 2,5 km according Lukring) near ….”#$&€{b.. (Bob).

    *shrinks again to lurking mode*

    1. Actually on reflection I am finding it difficult to believe the idea that the charts would have been rescaled. My reason being that at that time the quakes also reduced in number. Surely that would point to the fact that something happened to reduce both the harmonic tremor as well as the number of quakes? Or am i taking a somewhat simplistic view?

      1. That is what fooled us all. But what happened was that during the last few minutes the tremoring increased in power enormously as the eruption started, so then they just scaled down. And neglected to say it. In hindsight it so bloody obvious.

      3. A bit negligent not to say the scale had been altered but makes more sense than a conspiracy.

        However, it does indicate a lack of expertise on the scene which is more worrying. And may be leading to the mayor of La Pinar appearing to be in denial.

      5. Cabildo el Presidente Supremo Generalissimo, vehemently denies having ever aborted EldfjallþessierþekktursemBob and that the SvampurinnBobs are not pieces of a the blown up poor little EldfjallþessierþekktursemBob.

        I think that was a new record for our own little language. We will have to celebrate with a Sub-aquatic sheep in a hat before the Dalek.

      6. @ Carl –

        Soon we will need a glossary of the newly invented Icelandic names. The one I am hoping for would be the Icelandic translation of “the ephemeral island known as Bob that never happened”. 😀

      7. What did ÍdreymdieyjuþekktursemBobaðaldreigerst have to do with it, ÍdreymdieyjuþekktursemBobaðaldreigerst only exists in the mind of the El Cabildo Presidente y Excellente Armas.
        Out in the ocean lies EldfjallþessierþekktursemBob ready to throw a lot of SvampurinnBobs on the head of the Cabildo el Presidente Supremo Generalissimo. 🙂

      8. While drop in harmonic tremors I think it would look different then what we did see in El Hierro.

        The problem with re-scaling is that it gives the sense of false status on the data. While they may just have scaled the image (I can also do so with my software) it still confuses what is going on to the public, how is watching and reading the data as best he can.

      9. It looks to me that the gain had been turned down by a factor of 3. Old chart recorders often had x3 and x10 switchable gain settings. And CHIE is a an analogue device I gather, so may have similar sensitivity switching.

      10. Peter, look at the last couple of minutes before the rescaling. I think it is the 10er re-scale. Because a few minutes before the re-scaling the tremoring went into enormous mode. So considering the last trustworthy recorded data looks more like a 10 re-scale.

        “Old chart recorders”, big clunky turn dials to re-scale… Ah, the memories of “ancient-tech”.

    2. *suddenly wide-awake again from lurking mode*

      Just noticed tonight the big EQ swing on BUR (analog) strainmeter. It took near full TWO hours to pass. First thought it was just another transient but then noticed spike on nearly all stations in Iceland. Must have been hell of a slide, that K-Islands 7,4 Richter (down-slip towards S-America perhaps.

      PS: “Lukring…” err,emm,,,, meant Lurking (the King of Lurkers).

      3. I like.

        Onion rings that scald the tongue, while good and fresh, are inedible until they cool.

      4. on contrary. best tonight. Onion .. ouch..
        yes, have problem of lurking. Midninght you see… night hunt.. best time to take good timed eruption photos without dark filter 🙂

      5. It really depends.

        I’m like the strange dog that hangs out at the corner of the field, waiting for the opportunistic data drop or revelation.

      6. A bit angry right now at some of our local politicians.

        About 6 years ago, all but one of our county commissioners were removed from office. Of that six, one wound up in prison and one wound up drinking anti-freeze (ostensibly to avoid sentencing)

        So, we get a new batch. Now the director of our Equestrian center was fired, and the commissioner influential in his hiring is under investigation. First, I didn’t even know we had an equestrian center, and second, that explains the odd pile of asphalt sitting up the road that one was paying the other $1250 a month to keep there.

      9. Hmmm sounds like government here too. But before we get too political, I’m chilling out with a glass of wine and then off to bed.

        Have a quiet night in Iceland and on El Hierro.

  9. Did we find where H104 is sited? It seems to be moving towards (?) La Frontera despite lack of change on other Hierro GPS stations.

      1. Yep.. and it’s been thrown out.

        I found the post and read a notation that though the site notations are similar, they are chemical monitoring sites for operated by a company and not the GPS sites.

      3. Also, the geochem HI04 on this map is NE from Tanganasoga, while Enrique at AVCAN said that HI04 GPS was NW from Tanganasoga (and so the geochem HI05 from the map is in a more suitable location to be GPS HI04).

  11. If HIE101 et seq – marked as geochemical stations – are indeed the same as H101 etc than it is worrying that H104/Fron has moved without 101-102 -103 moving. That must mean a motion very local to H104 and it is only 3km from Fron GPS.
    That would give motion of about 15mm over 3km in a week????

    1. I’ve just seen Lurking 00-58. So its not H104. Ignore above – dont want to scaremonger.

  13. Dunno how I got attributed for first spotting a shift in scales on CHIE, but then I yammer a lot and may have said something but I don’t remember it. It might have been because of the drop in the number of detected quakes since the detection rate dropped pretty quickly when the tremor started.

    But, I can offer the evidence that the scaling at CHIE should worry the piss out of people. This is based off of observations that people made of CHIEs response to the 7.4 quake on the other side of the world.

    Rummaging through the data, you find that station CHIE is 160.82° away from the Mw 7.4. CCAN is 162.08°. If you are wondering what that is, it’s the central angle as measured at the very center of the Earth. Real geologists tend to think in that since it figures heavily in phase pickes as the waveform goes by.

    For us, it’s important in telling use that station CHIE should have seen the signal just before station CCAN.

    And… it did.

    (warning, big graphic)

    http://i52.tinypic.com/k0r95h.png

    I have marked the response that both stations had to the arrival of the Mw 7.4 quake.

    The worrisome bit is that CHIE barely even flinched. If the gain is cut back that far, that tremor must be really rocking.

    1. Does it? Of course there should be a degree of masking due to the CHIE tremor, but this is not reflected in the higher frequency of the spectrograph – and it should not be. That is, the signal is properly reflected at higher frequencies at CHIE. So why is it not possible that the ‘reduction’ in signal is exactly what we should expect – that the ‘central’ seismographic range is clipped in order to show the upper levels of the spectrum – meaning that ‘clipping’ the range of the spectrum (or, rather, demagnifying it) had the desired effect of focusing seismographic attention on phase shifts rather than ‘normative’ tremor, and doesn’t necessarily mean the eruption is beyond the expected parameters.

      1. Yeah, if you knew the gain curve. Generally, and in every text I’ve read, the emphasis is on having equipment with a nice flat even response across the spectra of interest.

        So…. you probably aren’t gonna find settings that shift the spectral response. Filters on the waveform in the analysis gear, yeah. But not likely on the collection side. It’s best to get all the data the gear is capable of, in a predictable manner.

        I think Ursula caught a sensitivity setting change in this graphic.

        Can you say “click”

        http://i53.tinypic.com/29hlja.jpg

      2. No, no, no… If you can have an instrument with flat response, you’ll be happy. Otherwise, you only need to know the response, and compensate for the non-linearities!

    2. @Lurking. Thank you for this excellent comparison. It indeed indicates to me there is not same scaling on the two stations. But what scale are they? Is it possible to convert the tremour to values that can be presented in graph.

      This below is just my thinking out loud. No happly sleep over this “discovery”.
      I think we have some time stamps. First is “start of tremour” at 04:17 hrs (10 Oct.) Possibly this is when first magma lump “expanded” on reaching -2,5km critical depth? (I assume here tremoring started BEFORE actual erution reached seabead, and looked up possible indicator of this). Then second found is possible when first lump of magma came into contact with sea-water at, say at -600 meters depth just about 09:58 same morning. Then “speed” was average 5,5 meters/min. I don not know if anybody (all) saved CHIE dayly tremour charts, I did on some-every-day bases to 15 Oct. But then lost interest in them. The sudden change at 14:32 on 12 October had me baffeled; it appears “linear” in shape so is it possible it was (internal) software “glitch” that changed the scale (discarding conspiracy theory). Just a thought.

      1. Following up on this thought, is it possible that it was not a “glitch” at all, but rather an automatic computer adjustment in response to the tremor becoming too large for the equipment to record in a legible manner? On the graph it seems like just after the tremor filled the whole upper screen, it switched to a more readable view, assuming of course that the tremor did not really decrease to that extent.

        Using this link, you can go forward or back in time by using the yellow arrows on the right.

        http://www.01.ign.es/ign/head/volcaSenalesDiasAnterioresHora.do?nombreFichero=CHIE_2011-10-12_14-15&estacion=CHIE&Anio=2011&Mes=10&Dia=12&tipo=2&hora=14-15

      2. This is actually the most plausible explanation.

        Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence… or equipment design.

  14. 1106972 22/10/2011 03:52:50 27.8417 -18.0484 20 1.9 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI
    1106970 22/10/2011 02:40:14 27.7871 -18.0417 23 1.7 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI
    1106969 22/10/2011 02:38:59 27.8023 -18.0554 21 1.6 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI
    1106968 22/10/2011 02:32:57 27.7982 -18.0558 23 1.7 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI
    1106946 22/10/2011 02:30:57 27.7484 -18.0313 22 2.3 mbLg W FRONTERA.IHI
    1106942 22/10/2011 00:17:52 27.7721 -18.0421 21 1.9 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI
    1106945 22/10/2011 00:15:36 27.8031 -18.0596 21 1.6 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI
    1106941 22/10/2011 00:10:58 27.8467 -18.0841 20 1.9 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI
    1106940 21/10/2011 23:40:55 27.7854 -18.0450 22 2.1 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI

  15. Well, I just spent about a half hour trying to squeeze a vertical displacement out of the IGN GPS data.

    I’ve done a few stations using a collection of “chamber” depths, I can’t get the traces to agree on anything.

    This is very good indication that I’m doing it wrong. The only thing I can safely say, is that H101,02,03 are not to the north or northeast of FRON… and that HI04 is probably on a near a direct line towards Restinga. I say this because the other GPS set indicates some uplift in that direction.

  16. And a profile view looking East.

    The most recent set, to the north, actually underly the original northern leg of the probable dike emplacement events.

    http://i54.tinypic.com/whbexi.png

    Originally, I was thinking that it was “emptying” related activity. Now I don’t have a clue. It could be additional melt forming from depressurization, it could be the system seeking equilibrium… I don’t know. We need someone with a lot more experience than I to hazard a guess about this one.

    2. Activation of a new feeder tube that is leading at a very shallow angle in to the fabled El Golfo Volcano?
      That is the only thing I could come up with. But then I lack enough experience too… Try seeing what Boris take is on it.

      1. I feel paranoid…maybe they don’t want us because we make fun of their sheep!

      2. Same here. I get

        Vefir Veðurstofu Íslands eru bilaðir.

        Vefirnir eru því ekki virkir sem stendur. Unnið er að viðgerð.

        © Veðurstofa Íslands – Bústaðavegi 7, 150 Reykjavík – Sími: 522 6000, Fax: 522 6001 – Símsvari:902 0600 – Kennitala: 630908-0350

        Whatever that may mean, because Giggle cannot translate it.

      4. giggletranslate of message:

        Links Employees are defective.

        Vefirnir are not active at present. Work to repair

        Hmm, defective employees?

    2. The Icelanders are just fine, and are working hard to repair whatever is broken!
      Unnið er að viðgerð – Work to repair.

  18. @Carl

    Saw that u are quoted on a scaresite caled the excintion protocoll…out of context as well from some luisport

    “Reply
    Carl le Strange says:
    October 21, 2011 at 20:56
    @Armand:
    Look at this, interesting proportionality between the P & S – waves. That slip fault plane was something else in size. If it hadn’t been a slo-mo quake it would have been a competitor to the Japanese quake for this years biggest counted in energy.”

    1. @Luisport:

      I do not take kindly to things like this.
      When I write things in here I speak to a crowd that understand me, and know that I am not an alarmist. People on sites like that are not the kind of people that should read things like that. If one of them wander in here and ask questions about what I have written I can explain. At sites like that I cannot, and will not, answer questions.
      So, in the future, do not quote me on anything on any site, without asking my explicite permission.
      It is one thing that Armand and María quote me, I trust their sites a bit, but more to the point, I trust them to give cool and calm answers to any questions, or go and ask me in here for an explanation.

  20. Magnitude mb 4.5
    Region ICELAND REGION
    Date time 2011-10-22 06:39:16.0 UTC
    Location 61.13 N ; 27.84 W
    Depth 10 km
    Distances 451 km SW Reykjavík (pop 113,906 ; local time 06:39:16.6 2011-10-22)
    444 km SW Hafnarfjörður (pop 22,289 ; local time 06:39:16.6 2011-10-22)
    408 km SW Hafnir (pop 118 ; local time 06:39:16.6 2011-10-22)

  21. An interesting change on this hourly spectrogram. What is going on now? Is this a real increase or could they just have rescaled the graph again (assuming they did before of course) but back up? I am getting confused now. Actually it doesn’t take a lot to confuse me these days. 🙂

      1. Looks like something happened at that point – we all thought they have downscaled the tremor when it suddenly went down one afternoon ? 10th – actually it was the start of the eruption.

  22. I cannot get on to the IGN website anymore 🙁 volume of traffic or possibly being restricted – anyone else have a problem?

    1. I’m OK on that but not some other sites – reading twitter there are some odd glitches in the internet this morning – at least someone else in Yorkshire is having problems ! :LOL:

      1. Oh! You are Yorkshire? I am just over the border from West Yorkshire. Dare I say?…In Lancashire!

      2. I got this message and translation too.. I think the Daleks have taken over! 🙂
        Seriously. IMO employees are definitely NOT defective. They appear to be well on top of all situations.

      3. Oops – I did not read it to mean that IMOs employees are defective.

        Apologies to any IMO employees who have been offended. As Diana says IMO do a great job.

    3. I been unable to open this site all morning either, and had to crash out when I tried the IMO site. I blame the fairies.

  23. The spectrogram shows some serious noise. Almost looks like a new vent has opened up and this time closer to the island or alot bigger than the previous vents.

    The scale is the same as before and then the noise was alot lower than it is now. Oddly the tremors doesnt seem to follow suit as they are increasing but not to the point of that what they were before.

    So less tremor, more noise.

  24. Update from Earthquake Report:

    http://earthquake-report.com/2011/09/25/el-hierro-canary-islands-spain-volcanic-risk-alert-increased-to-yellow/

    “Update 22/10 – 08:46 UTC: – We have noticed a sudden change in frequency since about an hour. Click here to see what we try to explain. The yellow and red colored zones have changed. We do not know the reason yet, but some (probably minor) change is going on below the volcano (but very deep and without danger to the population or their belongings). Similar changes have occurred during the recent days, mostly resulting in less activity soon after.

    Update 22/10 – 07:58 UTC – Overview of the last 14 hours
    – The Ramon Margelef, the oceanographic ship with the ROV aboard has been detected by one of our readers in Tenerife this morning. We expect that the ship will extend his crew with scientists and load additional fuel and equipment to set sail for El Hierro later today.
    – The number of volcanic earthquakes has been rising since the Sea Jacuzzi stopped working. Yesterday IGN recorded a total of 31 earthquakes varying in depth from 25.7 km to 10.6 km. Magnitudes reached a max. of 2.6.
    The first 8 hours of today (the list is not complete as of yet) we noticed 13 earthquakes (max. 2.3). It looks like we are heading to the pre-eruptive state with a steadily growing number of earthquakes unless … also the engine would stop suddenly (but he hasn’t stopped yet).”

    1. Still can’t get IMO but at least the web cams are working (except for RUV’s Hekla-cam).

      1. I think the red spike yesterday evening is the Kermandec earthquake. The rest, I don’t know, maybe wind? I can’t check the IMO website for weather conditions, as it is still down.

    2. Possibly. I am sure that there are more gaps in the plots than I remember from yesterday and earlier.

  27. @Lurking
    Going to write that in a second in ER
    The last sentence is for you 🙂
    Most of the earthquakes before October 7 also occurred SW of Frontera.
    Starting from October 7 until October 19 occurred SW of El Pinar
    Since October 19/20 activity picks up mainly NW of Frontera. Still deep without any danger. We are anxiously awaiting a new 4-D plot from GeoLurking to visualize the current earthquake area.

    2. @Armand and Jón:
      Why don’t you guys link to each other? I mean you have the two best sites on related issues, so it would be give both of you more readers, and hencefort more advertisement income.
      I rest my case.

  29. The increased earthquake activity suggests that it might not be long until a new eruption vents open up. When that might happen is hard to know for sure.

  30. Update 22/10 – 14:59 UTC: Joke Volta, the El Hierro resident reporting to ER, just returned from a visit to La Restinga (she lives in El Pinar) were she talked to the local fishermen. The fishermen told her that they have seen the Las Calmas Jacuzzi working again during the nightly hours (Puerto Naos longitude).

    1. AVCAN are just now in contact with a private boat Nautilux, which is close to the border of prohibited area. The boat can not see if there is a jacuzzi or not, but they will submerge a video camera into the water. They can not record sound, as they do not want to risk turning off the motor and with the motor on, they won’t be able to record any other sounds. They have however seen a lot of dead fish and the green water stretching all the way to the open sea.

      1. I guess you mean The Nautilus that is owned by Dr Robbert Ballard. The one that did the Titanic and Bismark dives.

        I guess that Dr Ballard got tired of the Spannish government running around like sheep.
        Finaly some good news. Now we will know.

      2. I don’t know if it is the same boat, the AVCAN people spell it as Nautilux and there is someone called Pedro Cano on board that they have contact with. They just said that the boat is now safely in the port and that they can breathe more easily because they were worried. And that shortly they will let us know more.

      3. Actually, checking again, they also said the boat is Pedro’s private boat. So probably not The Nautilus.

      4. Poop… Schtool…
        Would have been so nice if it was the Real Nautilus. How come that every news about exploration of the sea-bottom turns into a large turd?

      5. Well, better than nothing, no?

        Anyway, they are still waiting for more info, but it seems the boat picked up images and video at 30-40m depth at several points, in the green stain and outside. Images seem to show the effect on submarine fauna, not only dead fish on the surface, but also deeper-water fish at depth. Also they picked up various floating debris at various points. Could be also of interest if they managed to get any acoustic signal. For now they are going through all the data acquired and will keep us updated. And they also correct the name of the boat owner, it is Pedro Canomanuel, not Pedro Cano.

  31. Hi

    http://www.ign.es/ign/resources/volcanologia/txt/boletin_HIERRO.txt

    This shows the increase in quakes today.

    Perhaps while we are being observed my amateur speculation may be out of place. I still expect the main eruption to by in El Golfo, even though the majority of quakes are under El Hierro. My guess is that this is because of the hollow degassing tubes in the sedimentary rock, which Bob farted out through. And magma may attempt to use these routes, now they have been cleared by the degassing, and extrusion of the floaters, or they may be too narrow for magma proper. Quakes under El Golfo are still mostly under 20km, though the most recent was 17km deep, and shallow quakes are registering further out to sea as well.

    The next phase may be very different. The island itself is more solid, while El Golfo is largely composed of debris from the flank collapse. It is curious to watch this unusual volcano. I am not happy that worst case scenarios are not being actively planned for, as much as I hope that it will all settle quietly without harm to anyone.

    1. I think there would in any case be a worst case scenario, we just don’t know about it because the officials don’t like so much to talk about sth like that being afraid of scaremongering.

  32. I find it quite astonishing that the tone of discussion is generally against the scale change in IGN El Hierro tremor plots. Some of you seem to forget completely, why scientists are installing those tremor instruments…

    Could an electrician do his AC mains installation work, if his meter showed only DC voltages? Surely can, if he does not care about his own life. Or only AC voltages up to 20 Volts? Of course he can, but not safely!

    Those instruments were installed to monitor the seismic and/or volcanic tremor. And if you want to see the situation reliably both during quiet and noisy times, you got to have some serious capability of linear measurement range. Six decades is not too much in most cases! Actually it might even prove too small in some cases… I think the IMO tremor meters must have a linear range of more than 6 decades.

    So, you want to measure & present tremor in a range of six decades, and show the results in a “amplitude vs. time” plot? Ok, how do you keep the information accessible in spite of wildly changing tremor levels? The best option would be going into logaritmic plots (like IMO does). The second best option would be a linear plot with autoranging (read: autoscaling) by the plot software, with gain factor displayed. Or if you’re short of money or programming capabilities, you’ll do the range change (read: rescaling) manually based on actual need.

    So, I think the IGN rescaling was done based on purely technical and/or scientific reasons, to keep the flow of information going on! They did not have any clear manifestations on the surface about what’s going on. So their only information source is in those earthquake lists and tremor plots.

    If they had not rescaled, they’d be in the same boat with that poor electrician working on AC mains, and with a meter showing only DC readings. They would know, that something may be going on, but what? Is it overshoot by 10% or 1ox? Rescaling the linear plot is the only way to see any changes occurring in the signal.

    Therefore I do fully accept their act of rescaling. They seem to have had no other choice (given the assumption that they want to know what’s going on).

    And, we’re really spoilt by IMO. They have accomplished a quite remarkable act by implementing such wide range tremor instruments in such remote places, resembling more the scenes “behind the back of the evil gods” than anything else… And, given all these difficulties, they still have quite reliable data connections back to home, and open information flow to the internet in form of logarithmic plots, etc.

    Ugh, I have spoken…

    Caveat: I’m not a volcanologist / geologist / seismologist. I’m just a mad physicist who knows a thing or two about instrumentation…

    1. Lurking made the importaat observation: both Hierro and Gomera tremor plots changed simultaneously. There would be no reason to rescale Gomera’s, nor to do it simultaneously with Hierro. I no longer think it is rescaling.

      1. Unless it is the same equipment at both Hierro and Gomera with the same automatic rescaling parameter, so that this happens automatically once the tremor goes above a certain value. Then the simultaneous rescaling wouldn’t be suprising: if the tremor went over a threshold at both stations at the same time, they would both automatically rescale.

        I think rather than actual rescaling, it is more problematic that there is no scale indicated on the graphics that IGN produces.

      2. Hi! I’ve been lurking here, following the discussions about El Hierro (as well as things Icelandic). I have a simple question about the relative sensitivity of the helicorders – the big earthquake in the Pacific yesterday shows up very clearly in all the plots apart from the one from El Hierro (and, to a certain extent, Tenerife). Why might that be? The traces on the other islands resemble the very long period plots shown on British stations for that time. Was the event masked by the local shaking on El Hierro or perhaps being filtered out? Sorry if this a particularly dumb question!

      3. Hi Charles, check the first comments on this post, we had precisely this discussion yesterday and the general guess was that the El Hierro seismograph was rescaled on 12 Oct, when the tremor got too high. This way, the tremor was probably stronger than the Kermadec earthquake trace, which got lost. You can however see it in the CHIE spectral plot from yesterday – if you squint, there is a dark red dip in the lowest tremor at 18:07. I wrote about this above also, so scroll up and check the links.

    2. The problem with rescaling is that you loose your point of origin that you had when the eruption started. For the geologist it self this rescaling is just to confuse the issue (from my view anyway). As they can only re-scale the graphic all so much.

      But this eruption in El Hierro is rather small one and always have been. To comparison the harmonic tremor from Grímsfjall volcano eruption last spring was being recorded over ~100 km away clearly.

      1. To Jack Finland:
        Would rescaling really cause a problem like losing the reference point as Jón is thinking?
        I imagine they would just calculate that in.

      2. I think what we are grumbling on is this.
        The scientists know that the rescaling has happened, and can vector in the changes. So far so good.
        Problem is that we have locals who do not know. We have a Cabildo Presidente Majestico who apparantly thinks the eruption has ended, perhaps because he is doing a bit of amateur volcanology himself.
        My point is, it can cause mistakes. All because of the lack of a small notice on the page.
        “At xx.yy we changed the scale with a factor 10.”

      3. I’ve .been wondering about this rescaling issue, has anyone considered a minor hardware failure? maybe sensors, or some components in signal processing. latter would explain the signal showing “correctly” but at much lower level. Also a drop in sensor sensitivity would do the same.

      5. @Carl:

        Mostly I do agree. However, shouldn’t the non-expert bearing responsibility (e.g. this politician) listen to the experts instead of making his own guesses based on rescaled plots?!

        Yes, they definitely should have stated something about the rescaling in the page.

      6. @Inge: A hardware fault causing a rescaling of factor 10 exactly? I guess that’s about as probable, as a meteorite falling from the sky and killing exactly and only you or me…

        Ok, I can imagine some specific cases, when that might be possible, but none of them are particularly suitable for this kind of instruments.

      7. @Jon & @Inge:

        Yes, it can cause minor problems (mainly related to the interpretation of data) for the outsiders if they did not notice the scaling change. The insiders, on the other hand, know about the change, as they did it themselves!

  33. If degassing follows strata in sedimentary rock then ‘perforations’ through the island might form before a flank collapse, regardless of whether magma followed the same routes.

    1. Thank you, Lurking. Like so many others, I appreciate your plots a lot. They help with imagining how the earth works.

      1. Wild speculation.
        I have not really understood if there is/was an El Golfo volcano.
        But for the sake of reasoning I will now say it is one.
        The quakes look like a very shallow dyke or feeder tube. We still have to few quakes to be really shure. But if it is a feeder tube, where does it lead?
        It seems to be leading out to El Golfo, let us now hypothetically say that it exists and have an old derelict magma-reservoir. If so, could that new hypothetical feeder tube lead to it? Probably. Why? Quakes stop their progression all of a sudden, a characteristic common to magma reservoirs. Is there an alternative explanation? Yes, several.
        It could be a dyke infussion. It could be load bearing distributions from the new magma.
        But, here comes the one I think is most likely.
        As you all know by now there is a tripple-junction rift under El Hierro. One leads from the center of the Island down through La Restinga down the seamount. The quakes run parallel via this one over to El Golfo at larger depth then previous quakes. The most likely thing is that what we are seeing is the start of a widening of the rift from bottom up. The only reason for this is that new magma is moving up. The continuation of from the tripple junction out into El Golfo is in that case disturbing, because it could be a sign that the rift is extenting further to the north than previously believed, at least surface wise.
        End point, if these new quakes continue it could be bad.

        Caveat, every word above is wild speculation.

      2. Following J.C. Carracedo & S. Day: “Canary Islands. Classic Geology in Europe 4”, there was an volcanic edifice in the now existing northern embayment which they call the “El Golfo volcano” (p. 244).
        They are saying that the island El Hierro developed in 3 different stages:
        First the Tiñor volcano formed on the base of a seamount, oldest lavas 1.12 mill. years old, and collapsed after some hundreds of thousand years. The rest of it is to be seen in outcrops at the northeastern part of the island of El Hierro.
        After a pause, “a new volcanic edifice (El Golfo volcano) developed, filling the northwest-facing collapse embayment and finally spilling lavas toward the east coast overlying the Tiñor volcano (..) The El Golfo volcano developed entirely in the Brunhes period” (from about 545000 years on). “The radial dips of the lava flows indicate that the El Golfo edifice was near the [todays] town of Frontera (..), inside the collapse embayment. The summit region may have been as much as 2000 m above sea level.”
        Third stage of island development being – still following the same authors (p. 245)- the developed rift volcanism of today.

    2. @Lurking: That is just beautiful work. The way you prepare your plots and present the information is so much more understandable than any of the official sources – at least for a fellow lurker like me – that you put them to shame as far as conveying how this thing is unfolding. Congratulations and thanks!

    1. Interesting paper.
      From my amateur perspective its interesting that the paper focusses on Tanganasoga. This eruption site is on the E-W ridge on the central axis of the earthquake swarm. Looking at Lurking’s plots we can see that the EQ swarm has sharp cutoff at ca. 8km depth corresponding to the base of a 3km thick sedimentary layer. We do not know the date of past eruptions there, but Tanganosoga could lie over the weakest part of the crust, the sedimantry layer having been penetrated by magma in the past eruptions to create ‘thermal memory’, unlike to its north or south.
      The paper also notes the possible importance of large-scale landslide events in precipitating eruptions. Quote: “The eruption of such dense, crystal-rich magmas probably requires forceful triggering, and appears to be facilitated after large-scale landslide events.” So the ongoing motion of H104 GPS station worries me. Nowhere else on Hierro has moved in past ten days apart from H104, which has shifted 15mm futher from Frontera. We do not know where H104 is sited. BUT it would be reasonable to suppose that IGN know Tanganosoga is a likely eruption site and have therefore recently placed a GPS station there. So I suggest that the motion of H104 away from Frontera might reflect local movement in Tanganosoga.
      So I shall be looking for shallower EQs in that region. But the possibility cannot be oignored that a large shallow EQ under Tanganosoga might rapidly change the situation through a giant landslip.

      So where is H104 GPS station?

      1. Peter!
        I think you are onto something, but darned if I know what.

        While I am pondering what you are onto (which I do not know yet), I have a couple of coments.

        Regarding the sedimentary layer, I have a problem believing that it would work as hindrance for an eruption, I actually believe it is easier to go through than ignaeous rock. So, yes it may play a part, but sometime I feel that you give the poor rock to much credit.

        Secondly and perhaps much more importantly (I think). The IGN scientists are not idiots. They are highly trained and educated and have a lot of experience in the area. Problem is that we see them as volcanologist in Icelandic style. Thing is, and this is obvious that I should have noticed it a long time ago, they are mainly geologist specializing in land deformation. Yes, they have a couple of volcanologists of course, but the buld of them know one thing. And that is that the likeliest cause of a large number of deaths is not a volcanic eruption, it is actually a landslide, not only at El Hierro, so they have almost all of the equipment trained at looking for signs of things starting to move horizontally since that is a greater sign of an impending landslide than UP-component. So of course they look for combined horizontal motion.
        Okay, what the Hork am I jabbering about?
        Placement. The fabled and glorious H104 station should be placed where it would make the most use. In the light of it being placed to check for a landslide, we could then rule out all places that are on the rong side of the rift, and all places that cannot slide. So, with a bit of detective work we should be able to gleen out what can go that is not covered by the known stations? On that spot we should have the pesky H104.

      2. Guess here but, I think it is ontop of Tinganar.
        It is an obvious spot, it is on the rim of the old landslide line of El Golfo, it is the steapest remaining part of the slide rim, and it has a communications mast ontop of it. So it has communication handy together with a lot of nice electricity…
        But this is a guess based on logic deduction, and there are many grubby stages in that logic.

      3. Yes that would fit with IGN’s GPS being laterally focussed, until Nagoya took on the vertical challenge.
        I suspect H104 is taxing them and the public authorities.
        I am fascinated by the 8km deep cut-off. For me – a complete amateur – the fit with the sedimentary layer is too much to ignore. Can the higher temperatures needed to melt sedimentary rock be important?

      4. Now I think I know what I think you are onto 🙂
        Hooray!

        Let us say that your sedimentary layer is some sort of soft Brecchia, or soft Limestone structure under pressure, then it would be very ductile. Ie, it would be very un-brittle.
        Back to the banana ductility explanation (I know you would understand me without analogies Peter). A banana in its natural state is very soft and flexible. If bent it does not break, it just bends for a while, and then go mushy in the center point of bending, ie. it is highly ductile. Since it can’t break all of a sudden, a banana can not cause an earthquake. But if you freeze a banana to minus 20C and bend it, it will resist the bending untill it all of a sudden breaks (earthquake).
        Normally this ductile/brittle is actually temperature driven like a banana, the warmer the rock, the more ductile the rock becomes.
        But for a sedimentary soft rock compared to a basaltic rock (for example) takes a step lateraly instead. Think here of the basalt as a dried up hard banana and the sedimentary rock as a soft banana. One breaks into an earthquake, and one is a bendy banana.
        So, you do not need heat to make the sedimentary rock ductile, it is more ductile to beginn with. And also, some magma-created rock has very high melting temperatures like olivine for example that in its non-ferrous version melts at 1900 degrees C.

        See, your sedimentary layer has convinced even me 🙂

      5. AVCAN said (Enrique) HI04 is north-west of Tanganasoga in the coastal zone. So the displacement of this from FRON would probably reflect inflation in Tanganasoga, or?

      8. Google strikes back…
        I found tanganasoga to the south east of the coordinates of Tinganar.
        But we all know how google is… I could be wrong due to googleisity.

      9. @Ursula:
        Tanganasoga must be placed wrong on your map. As far as I know it is the rift-fissure volcano further south.
        But, Tinganara is wrong.
        New guess here. El Gretime.

  36. Regrettably I neither have a clue about the mysterious H104 station.

    I just found some information about Tanganasoga volcano:
    This is “the largest eruptive vent of the Rift series, with lavas cascading to fill the collapse embayment. The volcano is mantled by patches of pale trachytic ashes. These incorporate carbonized organic remains, dated at 6700 years old.” (From: J. C. Carracedo/S. Day: Canaray Islands. Classic Geology of Europe 4. Terra, Harpenden, 2002, 264)

    2. That’s interesting as the eruption dates are more recent than the few lavas that have been dated. In 6700 years tectonic plate motion of 25mm pa north-eastwards will only have shifted Tanganosoga about 160metres off the plume – negligible. So plume-triggered eruptions could still be expected there I guess.

    1. If they have, HI04 should show a downward vertical displacement and a SE horizontal displacement using the data Lurking provided a few posts back using Professor Sagiay’s data from his network. The other stations showed an upward SW displacement.

      1. A SE motion would fall on an arc centred on Frontera – therefore constant separation. So I agree – its not there.

      2. From memory, Frontera may have also shown upward SW displacement.

        I know I was trying to work out what would cause SABI and FRON to be moving closer with the former dropping and the latter rising, especially as a lot of the intitial EQ activity lay between the two. Not being an expert I could only think of asymetric rifting plus magma movement in a magma reservoir that is known to be highly complex.

  39. A continuing steady increase daily in the number of quakes. A total of 34 so far today and another 5+ hours to go yet.

      4. What about this quake?
        107033 22/10/2011 16:31:29 27.7337 -18.0200 34 1.8 4 SW FRONTERA.IHI With a depth of 34 km wouldn’t that be actually in the upper mantle? Interesting to me if it is as I wasn’t aware there could be quakes actually in the mantle. If this is a silly question please forgive me as I need to learn up on my earth sciences.

      5. I happens quite often.
        Either as sunken parts of a continent breaks, or sunken parts of rock, or as parts of the semi-solid mantle breaks due to the tremendeous pressure.
        You can now and then see quakes that are up 500 km deep.

  40. Thanks very much for the answer Carl. It seems the older I get the more there is to learn. Wonderful, I will never get bored as I get old when there is so many fascinating subjects on this blog.

  41. And while we where looking another way…

    6 quakes at Katla. Nothing strong, but she is ticking away now at a slow and steady pace. Todays business was at Kistufell mainly (southern tip of the southern fissure swarm), Trölladyngja (part of 1875 main basaltic lava flood), and our old friend Herdubred.

    Saturday
    22.10.2011 06:48:44 65.160 -16.381 11.0 km 0.6 99.0 2.2 km SW of Herðubreið
    Saturday
    22.10.2011 04:44:08 64.800 -17.244 4.9 km 1.3 99.0 2.7 km NW of Kistufell
    Saturday
    22.10.2011 04:29:37 64.802 -17.268 7.9 km 0.7 99.0 3.7 km NW of Kistufell
    Saturday
    22.10.2011 04:29:28 64.813 -17.263 5.4 km 0.6 99.0 4.5 km NW of Kistufell
    Saturday
    22.10.2011 01:32:06 64.839 -17.309 4.5 km 0.4 99.0 7.0 km SSW of Trölladyngja
    Friday
    21.10.2011 22:24:04 64.795 -16.909 1.1 km 1.4 33.47 14.3 km E of Kistufell

    1. Katla has added a few, including:

      Saturday
      22.10.2011 20:39:38 63.616 -19.127 1.1 km 2.1 58.88 4.2 km NNW of Hábunga
      Saturday
      22.10.2011 19:36:29 63.643 -19.355 0.2 km 0.2 66.09 5.2 km W of Goðabunga
      Saturday
      22.10.2011 19:36:28 63.679 -19.292 1.1 km 0.7 45.89 4.8 km NNW of Goðabunga

      1. Yes, could be of course. I know Grensdalur, it is the one with the reactivated geothermal field on Reykjafjall near Hveragerði aftur the 2008 Suðurlandsskjálfta / South Iceland Earthquakes (interesting to compare – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-QWjJPkZvc Video: 11. Juni 2008 vs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmK-KRfaGzE August 2009 vs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfkUt4wWWMA June 2010. It has been reheating which could also often be seen from Kambabrún (Highway 1): a lot of new fumaroles etc.
        And I remember when I was hiking at Hrómundartindur with a group from an Icelandic hiking club in 2007, the guide told us that there had been some new hot springs opening up on Ölkelduháls – showed us, too, or others expanding. We really had to watch our steps so as not to fall into a smaller one of them: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%96lkelduh%C3%A1ls_2007.jpg. Some years before I made the same experience with Gunnuhver – next to fell into a small “hver” (isl. for “hot spring”) which was disguised behind some grass!

    1. Well.. I have spent/wasted another hour rummaging around the IGN sites, using pretty much every legal search engine trick I can to get a hint about where HI04 is at.

      No joy.

      Got lots and lots of info flyer data about disaster management and humanitarian aid per-positioning stuff… I even found a treatise on DB-25 connectors and psuedo token ring topology. Some things you recognize even if it’s in a different language. Trons are trons after all.

      1. Perhaps Carl’s guess from above is of use though? That HI04 is at El Gretime (see my link above to geology map)?

      2. HI04 (Situado al noroeste del Tanganasoga) = located NW of Tanganasoga.
        An excerpt from Enrique’s comment at AVCAN.
        Probably you need a more accurate info, I know.
        But that’s all I have grasped so far. 🙂

      3. I’ve also spent the last hour google scholaring, sciencedirecting, etc. trying to find out if there are any IGN conference or journal papers about positions of GPS stations on El Hierro. Found quite a lot of fascinating stuff (mostly in Spanish though), but nothing more recent than 2008 or 2009, when the mysterious HI04 didn’t exist yet.

        So, I give up for now… Time for bed, good night everyone & hopefully the Tanganasonga-Bob stays quiet tonight (Sorry, I can’t possibly pronounce or write the icelandic names…).

  44. Maybe the scientists have lost their H104-station?

    In my mind I see them scientists frantically running around looking for their station in the bush somewhere; they still get the data ticking in regularly, but have forgot where they actually placed it ^^ …

    1. Oh they’ve got it. And for some reason it’s held close to the vest. Sort of like a hole card.

      The irritating part, is that I think I’ve come up with a way of estimating vertical displacement off it given a few variables. But I have to know where it’s at in order to do it.

      1. I am an idiot.
        They want it at the coast. There is a reason the SABI is in the town of Sabinosa.
        H104 is almost certainly slightly to the west of Sabinosa in a village called Pozo de la Salud. Both Sabinosa and the neighboring Pozo de la Salud is pretty much due north of El Gretime.
        Coordinates:
        27 45′ 22”N
        18 06′ 17”W

        This is a lot of logical bandying on the border of pure divination. But I think it is close enough to be “good enough”. If not the error margin should tell us something.

      3. Yepp, but sadly we deduced the wrong type, Estaciones sismicas are our garden variety SIL-station using IMO-lingo.
        The GPS:es are on the coast to maximize movement values.

  45. answer to the question where there is the mysterious station HI 104 gps on facebook
    quote “Julia Sisi
    Izzat and Maria, in this photo that Janay took during the informative chats, see the measurements of the distortion in this moment, and a photo of the station GPS in the roof of the Town hall of The Border. I cannot assure that that one should be it her is … tación H104 GPS, but yes I can make sure that in the roof of the Town hall there is a station of measurements. I hope you can deduce something more” https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150336886458447&set=a.10150336881713447.367214.163883668446&type=3&theater

    1. I’ll be damned if that picture doesn’t look like the standard vector GPS display. NS/EW/Vertical.

      1. Yes, but it is displacement of SABI and I don’t think the mysterious HI04 is marked on that photo in the left corner either…

    3. she ( my friend) gave me a wrong information. just confirmed it to me. Sorry – I sent an email to IGN, three days ago, asked about the hidden station H104 but they not answered me yet .

    2. It is this.
      1107045 22/10/2011 20:17:09 27.6767 -18.0287 16 Sentido 2.6 4 SW EL PINAR.IHI

    3. Earthquake, 2.6M, was felt on the island:
      1107045 22/10/2011 20:17:09 27.6767 -18.0287 16 Sentido 2.6 4 SW EL PINAR.IHI

  47. AVCAN 3 minutes ago on deformation data (for Lurking&Carl) and on HI03&HI04. Translation paragraph by paragraph.

    Hola Noemi,
    los datos de deformación con los que contamos son los GPS del IGN, que son dificiles de entender,ya que solo nos marcan distancias relativas entre estaciones y no movimientos en dirección N-S y E-W y deformaciones en la vertical, de modo que en todos ellos parece que se estabiliza la situación parandose las deformaciones.

    Hello Noemi,
    deformation data that we look at are those from GPS of IGN, which are difficult to undertand, because they only show relative distances between stations and not movement in directions N-S and E-W and vertical deformations, which (falsely) points to the fact that the situation is stabilising through deformations stopping.

    Pero hay algo que se puede sacar, pues el sensor HI03 ( situado al noreste del Tanganasoga en la zona de costa se mantiene en su deformación respecto al sensor de Frontera, mientras que el HI04 (Situado al noroeste del Tanganasoga en la zona de costa aumenta su deformacion respecto a la estacion de Frontera, alejandose cada vez mas.

    But, there is something that is noticeable, namely that sensor HI03 (situated at North-East of Tanganasoga in the zone on the coast) keeps its distance to sensor at Frontera, while HI04 (situated at North-West of Tanganasoga on the zone on the coast) is increasing its distance from the station at Frontera, moving further away with every measurement.

    Esto indica una cosa, que la tierra se está separando entre la HI03-HI04, es decir hay deformación horizontal entre estas dos estaciones indicando una posible zona de fractura o apertura de fisura, a la altura del Tanganasoga en la zona de costa….casi nada…

    This means that the land is stretching between HI03 and HI04, which means that the horizntal deformation between these two stations shows a possible zone for fracturing or for a fissure to open, at the top of Tanganasoga to the zone on the coast… almost nothing… (this last two words don’t make sense to me?)

    En cuanto los GPS de la Universidad de Nagoya, que se mantienen con datos provisionales, hasta los datos definitivos. Por cierto que han mejorado su red GPS con dos nuevas estaciones más, en el Julan y en el Faro ( de Orchilla supongo), en total 7.(Enrique)

    As far as GPS of Uni of Nagoya are concerned, those are provisional data, not final data. They have however improved their GPS network with two more stations, one on El Julan and one at El Faro (I suppose at Orchilla), in total 7 stations.

  48. Maria,
    I think that is SABI Sabinosa station part of the Nagoya network:
    http://www.seis.nagoya-u.ac.jp/sagiya/Sagiyas_Page/Canary.html

    The station we are looking for will have been established recently, late July early August, after the earthquake swarm started. the station started recording in mid-august:
    http://www.01.ign.es/ign/resources/volcanologia/jpg/ELHIERRO_GPS_FRON-HI04.jpg.
    It will be planted on solid rock and will look something like this:
    http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/gps/JPEG/kidj_upps3.jpg
    If it is remote from mains electricty it may have a solar photovoltaic panel, and a radio aerial to transmit data. They may have used existing radio telecommunications links, put the GPS near one.
    On the top of the island on the ridge high above Sabinosa Google Earth shows a lattice tower and solar panel -it looks like a small telecoms tower. It is about 800m west of a ‘concealed’ man-made structure with concentric earth rings and two sunken, rectangular buildings. And it is 400m west of a round green pond? Does anyone know if a GPS device has (or has not) been added there??
    Peter

    1. That is the place I pointed out above that google called Tinganar, it is a communication mast.
      If you look at this map, Tinganar is the out-cropping sticking right out in to the curve of the El Golfo landslide, nearest discernible place-name is El Brezai. If you then continue to the West you find El Gretime, that is the most likely spot. Tanganasoga is placed to far to the north on this map, it is further south.

      Funnily enough they would then have placed both at the most likely spots to A) do a landslide and B) the 2 most likely places to erupt if there is an eruption at Tanganasoga rift volcano.

      1. @Carl: The only thing is, if you look at my translation of Enrique’s post (one comment higher), he says both HI03 and HI04 are in the coastal zone. So, are there any potential locations with existing electricity/infrastructure not on the ridge (Tinganar, El Gretime), but further down from each of this (maybe on a line from each of these two ridge points perpendicularly towards the coast?)?
        What do you think?

      2. I just logically deduced that I had once again been an idiot and once again refined myself to:
        Pozo de la Salud, complete with co-ordinates.

        The reasoning and the coordinates is up above.

      4. Yes, we nailed the seismic stations, but we where both wrong. Those are SIL-stations, not GPS-stations.
        Nailing and loosing at the same time, my guesswork is better then my love life if I look at it in this way.

      2. Those stationes sismicas, the blue dots are stationes GPS (Nagoya-stations) and red is chemicales.

        But here comes the humoristic thing. Guess what is placed in the vicinity of Pozo de la Salud? That would be HE102.
        I will bet sheep sausages to be served at the Dalek-grilling that H104 and HE102 are at the exact same location.

      3. No, no, take a good look, this is a different map from the other one that kept popping up until now, where we had the geochemical stations HIE04 whatever. This is a new one, it’s from 19 Oct and the legent is like this:
        – blue dots = GPS stations by Nagyoa
        – green dots = seismis stations by IGN
        – red dots = chemicals.

        Also, green dots here are in different positions than in the old map. My theory is that they are IGN GPS stations (even though it says seisimc). Oh, let me just find the old map…

        Old map:
        http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=269420079758058&set=a.174701045896629.39574.134042953295772&type=3&theater

        New map:
        http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=275824685784264&set=a.174701045896629.39574.134042953295772&type=1&ref=nf

        Am I right?

      4. Ah, sorry, I misunderstood what you meant here (and just saw your comment above about SIL vs. GPS stations). It’s getting too late for my brain…
        🙂
        Anyway, I still think that the green dots from the new map could be have GPS sensors added. With that said, I think I’ll take my leave for tonight and go count sheep…

      5. Ehm, that should have been:
        “could have been the SIL stations with GPS sensors added.”
        Really, time for bed, I can’t write anymore…

      6. No, sadly for us you are wrong.
        The H104 is most likely where the HIE02 and HE06 are. And they are at Pozo de la Salud. There is something looking suspiciously like a small research hut out on a mall promontory jutting out into the ocean about a 100 metres east of the Hotel in Pozo de la Salud. The hotel is easy to spot, it has a rather large swiming-pool infront of it.
        Staciones Sismicas is still just the spannish version of the SIL.

      7. Ya know… if they mess up and post an HI04 to LPAL graph I’ll have this thing nailed.

    4. I think I’ll never have to buy a crime novel again. I just read this blog.

      Newest detective story: Where is agent H104?

      1. I suggest to check a sheep report…. 😀
        All these undercover agents worked hard lately, maybe they’ve found some trace on the field!

      2. Sheep agent H104 is believed to be spotted next to the Geochemical Water testing facility (Agent Sheep) HIE06 placed on a small promontory 100 metres to the east of the Hotel in the village of Pozo de la Salud.
        María, could you check that if you are passing by?

      5. Oh my Godabunga, no more Shaun the Sheep.
        I have just been baby-sitting a 2-year old the entire day (I am sucker at turning down baby-sitting), so I am over-dozed on Shaun the Sheep.

      7. Maybe search for a station with a woolly jacket, carrying a snorkel and looking lost.

Comments are closed.