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Steam explosion in Kverkfjöll volcano on 16-August-2013

During the night of 16-August-2013 several steam explosions took place in Kverkfjöll volcano. This steam explosions were a result of glacier flood that took place few hours earlier, since under the glacier lake in question are hydrothermal areas (hot spring). This hot springs are so hot they do not emit hot water, they emit steam and that means they are warmer than 150 Centigrade. When under pressure this water has higher boiling point. When a glacier flood happens there is a change in pressure, the boiling point of the hot water moves down, this super heats the water and a pressure explosion takes place.

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Effects of steam explosion in Kverkfjöll volcano on 16-August-2013. Copyright of this image belongs to Almannavarnir (Civil protection in Iceland). Picture is from Facebook.

I do not know if there has been any change in hydrothermal activity in Kverkfjöll volcano over the past few years. This volcano is remote and it is not easy to go there, even during the summer time. It has been advised for tourist to be careful around Kverkfjöll volcano due to this changes that are taking place there now. Hot springs and other hydrothermal features are always dangerous to get close to.

More information on Hydrothermal explosions and superheated water

Hydrothermal explosion (Wikipedia)
Superheating (Wikipedia)

Blog post updated at 15:04 UTC on 17-August-2013.
Blog post updated at 15:08 UTC on 17-August-2013.

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Minor glacier flood from Kverkfjöll volcano [Updated]

In a announcement from Icelandic Meteorological Office, an minor glacier flood has now taking place from Kverkfjöll volcano, it appears to have started yesterday (15-August-2013). This is one of the minor glacier lakes in Kverkfjöll volcano. This glacier flood in minor and the water levels are not expected to reach more than normal summer level in the glacier river the flood is going into. The glacier river is called Volga and is a glacier river from Kverkfjöll volcano glacier area.

Currently Icelandic Meteorological Office is taking a trip over Kverkfjöll volcano to see the local changes and what is exactly is going on. Current status of the glacier flood is not well known, but latest report suggested that some subsiding was taking place, if that is because the glacier flood is over or something else is taking place I am not sure about at present time.

Update 1: Icelandic Civil Protection has confirmed that steam explosion took place in Kverkfjöll volcano following the glacier flood (due to sudden pressure release) that took place during the night and in the morning. News about that can be found here in Icelandic.

Web cameras of Kverkfjöll volcano

It is possible to view web cameras of Kverkfjöll volcano here. Weather information can be found here.

Icelandic news about this glacier flood

Óvenjulegur vöxtur í Volgu (mbl.is)
Hægt hefur á vexti hlaupsins (mbl.is)

Blog post updated at 20:47 UTC on 16-August-2013.
Blog post updated at 21:29 UTC on 16-August-2013.

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Skaftárkatlar cauldrons full of water [Updated]

According to recent pictures and from Rúv News it appears that both Skaftárkatlar cauldrons are full of water at the moment. They might burst at any moment and create glacier flood, the right cauldron has not flooded for the past three years according to Rúv News, while the left cauldron flooded last year. When they might flood is impossible to know, but it is expected to happen in next days to weeks.

Update 1: Icelandic Meteorological Office has now declared that Skaftárhlaup glacier flood is going to happen soon. A glacier flood can start at any time without warning. The risk comes from gases in the water, along with the floodwater it self as it can reach up to 1500 m3 at peaks levels. There is also a risk the flood might go into new rivers and those rivers has bridges that might not be able withstand such glacier flood.

Details in Rúv News

Mikið vatn í eystri Skaftárkatli (Rúv.is, pictures)
Video of the Skaftárkatlar cauldrons in Vatnajökull glacier.

Skaftárhlaup vofir yfir og skapar hættu (Rúv.is, Icelandic)

Information in Icelandic from Icelandic Meteorological Office

Yfirvofandi Skaftárhlaup og möguleikar á hlaupi í Hverfisfljóti (vedur.is, Icelandic)

Blog post updated at 18:04 UTC on 14-August-2013.
Blog post updated at 19:04 UTC on 14-August-2013.

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New earthquake swarm on Reykjanes Ridge

During the night at 04:40 UTC a earthquake swarm started on the Reykjanes Ridge. There are no signs of this earthquake swarm being connected to any volcano activity, this just normal earthquake activity for this area. The largest earthquake in this swarm had the magnitude of 3.0, other earthquakes had less magnitude.

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The earthquake activity on the Reykjanes Ridge today. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

As with the earthquake swarm on 11-August-2013, this earthquake swarm happens short periods of activity with quiet between them. I do expect this activity to continue for the next hours to days, based on past history for this area. If that is going to happen I do not know yet. Largest earthquakes that can take place in this area can reach the magnitude of 5.5, but no larger than that, since the crust does not support any greater magnitude.

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Earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes Ridge

A minor earthquake swarm took place on the Reykjanes Ridge during the night, it started at 04:17 UTC and ended at 08:13 UTC, there was some break in activity for few hours with each episode lasting for around 10 minutes. Earthquake swarms are common in this area of the Reykjanes Ridge. The largest earthquake in this swarm had the magnitude of 2.9, other earthquakes were smaller in magnitude.

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The earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes Ridge, the earthquakes scattered around wrong locations by the automatic SIL system. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This earthquake swarm did appear clearly on my geophone network in Iceland. It can be viewed here. I do not know if this means more activity is coming on the Reykjanes Ridge, it is all just wait and see what happens in this case.

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Donations needed for August

If there is one thing bad about being on social welfare, it is how bad my income is. I hope that my short story is going to sell when I publish it next few weeks (the story is ready, but some work still needs to be done), but I still won’t get paid until at least 60 days later after I start selling it. More information about where and when the short story goes on sale is going to be published here. Those who have donated and want a copy for that reason, just drop me a line to let me know so I can email it to you once it is published. For month of August I at least need donations, since the prospect of just eating rise and other cheap food for this month is not appealing to me and never has been.

Donations also help me write on this blog, since I need to buy food and all the normal things that people do. For the advertisements to pay off for me, I need to have at least 3 million page loads a month if I want to survive on that income alone. This aspect is well explained in a recent article on Cracked website, but since I am no-nonsense type of person I do not write sensualism blog posts in order to get traffic to website (unlike many other volcano and earthquake related websites out there), for that reason my pageviews remain rather low (300 to 1200 pr day, sometimes lower), this is applies mostly when nothing is happening in Iceland as is the currently the case at the moment. I am currently considering my own type of humor type of website. It might improve my traffic and income, but currently it is a work in process and I do not know when I might get it up and running. If it ever gets that far to start with.

I am also working on other project that is related to volcano and earthquake activity. I am not sure yet when it enters local beta (it is going to be based on MediaWiki, but I still need to learn how to use it and that is going to take some time) or when it is going to be ready for the internet.

I want to thank everyone how support me. I am thankful for the support in this hard times and it allows me to continue my work on this website and other volcano and earthquake related projects that I currently have. Other volcano and earthquake related projects that I have are Europe geology blog and Icelandic version of this website.

Blog post updated at 19:10 UTC on 8-August-2013.

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Where has all the activity gone?

It has been quiet in Iceland this summer, often with only 100 earthquakes during the week (7 days) taking place. This is normal for Iceland, since activity takes happens in jumps, with long quiet period between them. That quiet period can be from few days and up to thousands of years. This is normal for every rift and subduction zone on planet Earth, activity happens in short periods and during that time a lot of things can be going on during that period. Between it nothing is taking place, this applies to Iceland as any other place on Earth. Currently nothing is happening in Iceland and tension is building up while it is quiet, at some random point at some random day this tension is going to break and we are going to have either a earthquake swarm, eruption or both taking place.

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All quiet in Iceland. There is currently some minor summer earthquake activity taking place in Katla volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

For more information on Icelandic geology, I recommend this paper (pdf) by Páll Einarsson. It is from the year 2008, but is a good read on the tectonic settings in Iceland. It might be a surprice to many, but in Iceland there are actually 5 rift zones, they are called Western Volcanic Zone (WVZ), Central Icelandic Volcanic Zone (CIVZ), Eastern Volcanic Zone (EVZ), Northern Volcanic Zone (NVZ) and South Iceland Volcanic Zone (SIVZ). Then there is Reykjanes Peninsula Rift (RPR). This zones are not all active at the same time and there dormant time is different, some areas are just dormant for few years to decades, while others are dormant for thousands of years.

For the moment it is quiet, so I have little to write about. Since this blog mostly deals with current activity that is taking place in Iceland.

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Earthquake swarm in Tjörnes Fracture Zone

Yesterday (31-July-2013) a earthquake swarm started in TFZ, the south end of it, not far from a village named Kópasker. This earthquake swarm was small most of yesterday, but after midnight this earthquake swarm started to pick up in activity and magnitude of earthquakes. Around 07:09 UTC this morning (1-August-2013) a magnitude 3.7 earthquake took place, this earthquake was felt in Kópasker along with few magnitude 3.0 earthquake that took place after it. The epicenter of this earthquake swarm is out in the ocean, so no population is any major danger if this earthquake swarm continues as is.

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The earthquake swarm in TFZ today. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This earthquake swarm is currently ongoing and there are no signs that is going to end soon, current activity is not continuous, it drops regularly and then it resumes again. It is impossible to know for sure how long this earthquake swarm is going to continue. The largest earthquakes appear clearly on my geophone and can be seen here.

Blog post updated at 18:11 UTC on 01-August-2013.

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Infolinks has been deleted from my English blogs

Since Infolinks did disable my websites from their advertising network on the ground that I was using it on my Icelandic blog, while in fact I was not doing so, since it just would not have worked at all (since it is based on English keywords search). I did try and resolve the matter with Infolinks over a email, but no resolve was to be had over this issue, even if I only had Infolinks installed on my English blogs that are in subfolders (that is jonfr.com/volcano as an example) on this domain (jonfr.com). They also forbid people to add Infolinks to “unregistered” web sites (even if on the same domain), yet at the same time they do not accept such sites when on same domain because they have already accepted this domain already. Even if this is just one website in question. I find this behavior and level of incompetence not something that I work with and in this case, there was no resolve to be found on this issue.

Since no resolve was to be had in this matter and since I have already tested what they did suggest I needed to do (it did not work then and I do not expect it to work now). I have asked Infolinks to delete my account and refund my earnings to the advertisers in question. I guess that I just have to work with what I got now. Since Infolinks had already been disabled on this blog, I have now disabled the WordPress plugin connected to it. What is left is to just delete them from my WordPress blogs.

I won’t add Infolinks to my blogs again or any of my future blogs. Ever.

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Melting of glaciers in Iceland might mean more volcano activity

In the evening news on Rúv tonight (23-July-2013) a interesting report about possible future volcano activity was being reported. A unpublished paper (according to Rúv News) reports that with more glacier melt in Iceland, more eruptions should be expected to take place. This is mostly true about areas like Vatnajökull glacier, as it holds several volcanoes that are under heavy pressure from the glacier ice. This applies mostly to volcanoes like Grímsfjall volcano, Bárðarbunga volcano and Kverkfjöll volcano, but those three volcano are the largest ones in Vatnajökull glacier.

This might also apply to areas like Mýrdalsjökull glacier. If this study is true, there might be more eruptions in Iceland in next few decades as the glacier melts away. This like so many other things, is however something that is just wait and see seranio.

At the moment, everything is quiet in Iceland when it comes to activity in volcanoes and on fault zones in Iceland.

Rúv News about this

Auknar líkur á eldvirkni með bráðnun jökla (Rúv.is, Icelandic, video)