Month: March 2013

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Earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes ridge

Today (20.03.2013) at 10:51 UTC an earthquake swarm started on the Reykjanes ridge. This earthquake swarm was about 850 km away from Reykjavík so it was not felt. This also gives little information on what is happening in this location. Since the depth of the ocean at this location is around 2 to 3 km. The largest earthquake in this swarm had the magnitude of 4.8 according to automatic EMSC results. The range of magnitude that was detected is from 4.6 to 4.8. The estimated depth is around 10 km. But that might not be correct.

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The location of the strongest earthquake in this swarm on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to EMSC.

More information on the strongest earthquake in this swarm can be found here, on the EMSC web site. I do not know if activity is going to continue in this place. This location is just too remote to know that for sure.

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Spam protection on registering new users

This is a sticky blog post. Please look at the newest one below this one.

I have put up rather heavy spam protection when users are registering. The reason is simple. This blog is getting flooded by spam registration and I cannot have that. Just in the past 24 hours that spam system has stopped 678 spam bots from registering (multiple tries). I am not saying this is going to stop all of the spam bots (I delete spam bots when I see comments from them). But it is going to stop many of them.

If you are going to register please follow the on screen guide. Do not register multiple times if your first attempt fails. Contact me or just wait 10 days and then try again. It might take some time for the email to arrive in some cases. This is not always the case and you should get your registration email right away.

If you are having problems with this new system please let me know so I can attempt to solve it for you.

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Magnitude 4.8 earthquake deep on the Reykjanes Ridge

During the night there was an earthquake deep on the Reykjanes ridge. This earthquake had the magnitude of 4.8 according to automatic result from EMSC.

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The earthquake on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to EMSC.

Due to earthquakes location there is not a lot of details on it. But this location on the Reykjanes ridge has been seeing some activity in the past few months. This might well just be normal tectonic activity for this area. More information on this earthquake can be found here.

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Earthquake activity in Esjufjöll volcano

Earthquake activity has started again in Esjufjöll volcano after some time with no activity. The two earthquakes that where detected by the SIL network only had the magnitude of 1.0 and 1.1. But what is most interesting is there depth. But registered depth is around 0.1 km (around 100 meters). This really shallow depth for earthquakes in this location. While it is unclear what is creating this earthquake activity. The most likely reason is that an minor dike intrusion is taking place in the volcano. Last eruption in Esjufjöll volcano is believed to have taken place in the year 1920. But that has not been properly confirmed yet.

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Earthquake activity in Esjufjöll volcano is marked by the red dots in Vatnajökull glacier. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

It is impossible to know for sure what is happening in Esjufjöll volcano. Not only is there little known about earlier eruption history of this volcano. It has also been poorly studied in the past. So what to expect if anything happens is not known properly. Based on earlier earthquake activity in this volcano from the year 2011 more earthquakes might happen in next few days to months. But it is impossible to know that for sure at the moment. But it is not an bad idea to monitor this volcano for any more activity in next few weeks.

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Weather has been problem for monitoring instruments on Mýrdalsjökull glacier this winter

Bad weather has been a major problems for monitoring Katla volcano (and others also) this winter in Iceland. Not only has the bad weather damaged communications setup for the instruments in question. But also has a lot of snowfall prevented solar chargers and windmills that generate power for this instruments made them fail. In many cases the instruments them self are also under several meters of snow in few cases.

This means that for long periods during this winter there have been no data recorded on several SIL stations on Mýrdalsjökull glacier. But last week technicians from Icelandic Meteorological Office and University of Iceland did go up to Mýrdalsjökull glacier to try and fix the broken instruments and hardware in question. They had some success. But have to return later to repair the hardware they where not able to repair this time around.

Icelandic news about this repair mission can be found here. This news is in Icelandic.

Mýrdalsjökull leikur mælitæki grátt (Rúv.is, Icelandic)
Fréttir: Jökullinn leikur mælitæki grátt (Icelandic, Video)

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Earthquake activity intensifies in Skjaldbreið

The earthquake activity that started in Skjaldbreið yesterday continues. This earthquake activity has been picking up in number of earthquakes. But when this blog post is written no earthquake has been over magnitude 2.0. That however might change if this earthquake activity picks up more from the current activity level.

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Earthquake activity in Skjaldbreið south of Langjökull glacier. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

It is hard to know what is going to happen in this earthquake swarm. But earthquake activity in this area is often “slow”, in the terms it is slow to start and reaching its high point. If that is going to happen now is impossible to know. All that can be done is to watch and see how this earthquake swarm progresses and if any stronger earthquakes start to appear. Stronger earthquakes might not appear at all in this earthquake swarm. But they also cannot be ruled out.

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Three earthquakes in Hekla volcano

During the night there where three earthquakes in Hekla volcano. All of the earthquakes where small with the magnitude of 0.6 up to 0.9. Depth of this earthquakes was on the range of 10.7 and down to 11.8 km. No other activity has followed this earthquakes in Hekla volcano since this earthquakes took place.

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The earthquakes in Hekla volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

Currently there are no signs of volcano eruptions in Hekla volcano. If that changes I am going to write about it. But for now Hekla volcano is as quiet as it has been since the year 2000. When last eruption took place.

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Minor earthquake swarm in Skjaldbreið

During the night a small earthquake swarm started in Skjaldbreið south of Langjökull glacier (might be part of Presthnjúkar volcano). This earthquake swarm is minor. With largest earthquake only being magnitude 1.9. While this is an minor earthquake swarm there seems to be more activity taking place then appears on reviewed and automatic SIL map. The reason for that is the earthquakes in questions are small to be located by three or more SIL stations in the area. While this unseen earthquake activity does not appear on Icelandic Meteorological Office maps it can be seen on the SIL station closest to the earthquake locations.

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Location of the earthquake swarm in Skjaldbreið. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

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Activity at the end of this tremor plot suggests more earthquakes are taking place. But they are not being located as they are not detected on three or more SIL stations. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

Earthquake activity is common in this area. Since it is on the tectonic plate boundaries in Iceland. It is difficult to know how this earthquake swarm is going to behave in the next few hours. But so far it has stopped for few hours before continuing again.

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Earthquake swarm in TFZ

During the night an earthquake swarm started in TFZ. The first earthquake had the magnitude of Mw3.8 according Icelandic Meteorological Office. This earthquake was felt clearly in the area it has been reported. Above 20 aftershocks have been recorded in this area following this earthquake.

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Location of the magnitude 3.8 earthquake in TFZ. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

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Trace of the earthquake activity. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

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This earthquake was well detected on my geophone in north Iceland. This image is released under CC Licence. Please see CC Licence page for more details.

It is possible to watch this earthquake activity on my geophone network page here. At the moment the earthquake activity has stopped. It is impossible to know if it is going to start again in this area or not. But this area is normally highly active in terms of earthquake activity during the year. So earthquakes swarms like this are not uncommon.

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Two SIL stations have failed during winter on Mýrdalsjökull glacier

During a rather harsh winter in Iceland. Two SIL stations have failed on top of Mýrdalsjökull glacier. This are the SIL stations Austmannsbunga and Etnu glacier (local name). The reason for the failure is ice that loaded on to the mast the SIL stations. Making it fall down on the ground. Therefor making the SIL stations lost contact with Icelandic Meteorological Office and University of Iceland. University of Iceland and Icelandic Meteorological Office plan a trip soon to this area of Mýrdalsjökull glacier too fix this SIL stations that are broken. But the weather has too improve first in Iceland before that can happen.

I also suspect this is the problem with the SIL stations on Vatnajökull glacier. That SIL station just has the term “vot“.

Icelandic news about this weather related failure

Skjálftamælir á Mýrdalsjökli óvirkur (Rúv.is)