Day: September 27, 2013

Posted on

Earthquake activity continues on Tjörnes Fracture Zone

The earthquake swarm that started two days ago (wrote about it here) in Tjörnes Fracture Zone continues and appears to be growing in the past few hours. So far the largest earthquakes have not been stronger then magnitude 2.6 or 2.7 (automatic and reviewed results).

130927_1410
The earthquake swarm in Tjörnes Fracture Zone. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

None of this earthquakes have been felt that I know. Since they are good distance (~20 km) from populated areas and are small at the moment. That might change if larger earthquakes start to happen in Tjörnes Fracture Zone. Currently this earthquake swarm activity is mostly continuous with just few stops in it, no stop has so far not lasted more than 1 to 3 hours so far. Currently this earthquake swarm activity is ongoing and I do not expect it to stop at the moment.

Posted on

Magnitude 5.5 earthquake deep on the Reykjanes Ridge

Last night (26-September-2013) an earthquake took place deep on the Reykjanes Ridge. This earthquake had the magnitude of 5.5 according to reviewed results from EMSC. This earthquake was close to 1000 km from the south coast of Iceland so it was not felt by any human. Fish and crabs might have been disturbed however at that location. More information about this earthquake can be found here on EMSC website.

335951.regional.mb.5.5.svd.26-September-2013
The earthquake location on the Reykjanes Ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to EMSC.

An aftershock with the magnitude of 4.6 was recorded on the same location. Information about that earthquake can be found here on EMSC website. It is possible that more smaller earthquakes took place in this location, but due to distance from any seismometer network any smaller earthquakes then this are not detected at all.

Posted on

Closing down comments

I have decided to follow in the footsteps of Popular Science and close down comments. The reason is that comments have not served this blog well, in fact comments almost did bring down this blog back in the year 2011 and in part did do so to some extent. Since allowing comments is allowing people to argue and that can have huge negative effects. I have also been having a major issue with spam comments, you don’t see it since I have set-up good filtering system against spam comments. But they remain a problem and have been so for a long time now.

So I am closing down comments on the following blog from now on.

Europe geology blog
Canary Island geology blog
Spacewatch
Falkland Islands

I am not closing comments for good. If I have to I am going to open up comment. This applies if an major events takes place in Iceland, Europe and in Canary Islands. If you want to comment, you can do so on my Google+, Facebook page or on my Twitter site.

I hope that people understand why I am following into the footsteps of Popular Science. This needs to be done and often my time is better spent on doing something else than to watch out for comments and spam on this website.

More information on Popular Science decision can be found below

Popular Science blames ‘trolls’ for comments shut-off (BBC News)
Why We’re Shutting Off Our Comments (Popular Science)
Popular Science ends reader comments, says practice is bad for science (Yahoo! News)

Blog post updated on 27-September-2013 at 03:02 UTC.