Month: November 2011

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Short update on El Hierro volcano eruption

This is a short update on El Hierro volcano eruption. As the situation is changing fast this past few hours.

It seems that the eruption in El Hierro volcano is gaining strength and power. The harmonic tremor on the seismomter that is on the El Hierro Island it self has started to get saturated again. It also have been unconfirmed reports of the south fissure growing in size. But so far nothing has happened in the north part of El Hierro volcano. Even if there have been many earthquakes in that area. But this area fell suspicious silent this morning. So something might be up in that area. Update 1: A string of earthquakes happened around 12:00 UTC in this area. Suggesting that something is still up there.


The harmonic tremor at 13:52 UTC. Notice how the tremor has started to saturate the seismometer. Copyright of this picture belongs to Instituto Geográfico Nacional.

What happens next is anyone guess. But people need to be aware that fissure eruptions are sometimes long in terms of the length of the fissure. But that phase normally does not last long, as soon the eruption is going to isolate it self into few craters on the fissure. I also recommend that people read Erik Klemetti blog post about El Hierro from yesterday. If you haven’t already done so.

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Increased eruption activity in El Hierro volcano

I was going to post this yesterday. But I fell a sleep at 17:00 UTC and I didn’t wake up until 03:00 UTC.
*******

The eruption in El Hierro volcano continues as it has been doing for past few weeks with little change. The first eruption vent that did open south of El Hierro Island has continued to erupt. But so far no Island has formed and it is unclear if it is going to form, as the depth is great in this area. Since yesterday around 06:00 UTC the harmonic tremor has been increasing. But this suggests that new vents have opened up in the south eruption area. I got some pictures of that yesterday in the email. But they did not show anything new in my view. Thanks to the readers how did send me those pictures.

The current fluctuation in the harmonic tremor from El Hierro suggests that magma is on the move in the north part of El Hierro Island. Both off the coast and maybe inland on the Island where earthquakes have been taking place. It is impossible to know how this is going to develop during the next few hours to days. As that depends on the rock structure of El Hierro Island and earlier eruptions.

Earthquake activity

During the past two weeks the earthquake activity have been growing in the North-west part of El Hierro Island. The reason why this is happening is that a new fissure is about to open in this area. As I have mentioned before in earlier blog posts. When and where is impossible to know for sure. The largest earthquake so far took place this morning, it size was ML4.0 with the depth of 20 km. But this is the automatic data from IGN. This pattern of earthquake activity is most likely going to continue during this eruption process in El Hierro volcano. Since the eruption type here is a fissure eruption.

It is worth noting that earthquakes in once place does not mean that the eruption is going to happen in that place. As the magma can travel in dikes all over the El Hierro Island and show it self anywhere on the Island it self. So the general risk is high in my opinion. The only action that can be taken is to be prepared for sudden eruption of new vents on El Hierro Island. Since there is a good amount of magma on the move inside El Hierro volcano.


The harmonic tremor in El Hierro at 08:54 UTC (when picture is saved). The spikes are earthquakes, and harmonic tremor spikes are the “waves” in the harmonic tremor pattern. Copyright of this picture belongs to Instituto Geográfico Nacional.

Update 1:

* When I wrote this blog post. This two earthquakes took place.

1109584 02/11/2011 08:37:11 27.9267 -18.1084 3 1.7 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI
1109582 02/11/2011 08:36:00 27.5986 -17.9594 1 1.9 mbLg S EL PINAR.IHI

This are the most shallow earthquakes that I have seen so far. From the depth it is possible a magma has found a clean path to surface in this two areas. Sadly there is no map. So I am not sure where this earthquakes took place in El Hierro volcano.

Update 1b: The earthquake have been revised. Now the depth is 9 km for the ML1.7 and 22km for the ML1.9.

The shallow earthquake.

1109584 02/11/2011 08:37:11 27.9304 -18.1107 9 1.7 mbLg NW FRONTERA.IHI [+]

I am going to post more information when I know more on what is taking place in El Hierro.

Blog post updated at 11:24 UTC on 2 November, 2011

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Website news for November 2011

This is the first official website news for Iceland volcano and earthquake blog for November 2011. The purpose of this web site news is to tell people what is going on with me [Jón Frímann] and this web site that I run. I do not intend this to be a long blog posts unless I have to. This is going to be divide into needed sections of what is going on. I hope that have this every month from now on.

Monitoring changes for earthquakes and volcanoes

The following areas has been added to my personal monitoring system, Spain and Canary Island (part of Spain), Denmark (since February). Following areas are now part of special report system. Azores Islands, Madeira Island. But special reports cover eruptions and major earthquakes for a short time period. I also cover all major earthquakes that happen on the planet Earth. That is earthquakes that are larger then Mw8.0 in size. I have to have limit to what I cover here. As I cannot have good quality if I am cover too much. I rather want to cover less and have better quality of what I cover.

Twitter

I have added a twitter button to this web site. So links can now be shared more easy on twitter. Facebook button is so far not in the picture. As they are just too complex to setup from my point of view (they also appear to track people from what I can gather). So I won’t bother with setting up a Facebook button.

Web site traffic

It took one year to get 1 million page views. But it only took a month or so to get up to 2 million page views. Currently the page load counters stands in this number, 2,142,929 page loads. But this equals to 652,725 visits to this blog during a little bit over the year. For the earthquake pages there have been 3,057,298 page loads since that web site was started back in the year 2006. But that are 696,378 visits to that web sites since I did start it. So far the traffic does not warrant a move to dedicated server. But that might change if the traffic grows even more in the future. So I am watching out for that possibility in the future.

Geophone network

The geophones that I did order are finally in Iceland. I am going to pick them up at the post office tomorrow I hope. I hope that I can install and start both of them in December. But I am not going to have time to install then in November.

Money issues

I became debt free yesterday (finally). The last day of October 2011. But that does not change the fact that I am going to continue to be broke as I have been. Since now I have to spend my money into saving for the move to Denmark (since I was unable to have both options). I am also saving up so that I can buy a new tv, as my old tv is getting tired and bit breaking down in the tube monitor (I also find it better to look at LCD monitors, but I have poor eyesight). The total cost of moving back to Denmark and buying a new tv is estimated about 4.396,00€, 32.697,00DKK, 6.153,00$, 3.843,00GBP, but this is about 700.000 ISK that I need to save up before I can move back to Denmark. But I am saving everywhere that I can. I have placed payments from Google Adsense on hold so I can save that money. I am not getting anything from Amazon ads at this moment, so it does not matter at current time. The saving for the move to Denmark starts tomorrow. It is going to take me until June to get the money that I need to move back to Denmark. I plan to start looking for a apartment in March or maybe earlier. It is a bit unclear at the moment. But it is going to take few months to get apartment in Denmark (I think). But I am in a hurry to move from Iceland for many different reasons.

Update 1: Due to currency restrictions in Iceland I cannot save money on Google Adsense as I had hoped. As I am going to need that income to pay for bills and other things from my danish bank account. I just hope for the best in this regards.

For that reason I am going to have to relay on donations as before. At least until this annoying period in my life goes over. I do not ask for a lot. Just something to make the month in terms of expense that we all have to deal with.

Thanks for reading and the support.

Blog post updated at 13:45 UTC on 1 November, 2011.
Blog post updated at 08:52 UTC on 5 November, 2011.