Month: November 2013

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Windy in Iceland (storm), quiet period and donations

It is quiet and windy in Iceland, so here are few things that I have been thinking for the past few days.

Donations – Support

I have received a lot of donations over the years and for that I am truly thankful. For without them this site would not exist in it’s current form. I love writing and I love earthquakes and volcanoes, so it’s a good mix for me, for my fiction you can go here or buy it as e-book once it’s ready. The people who took my offer long time ago about free e-book if they supported me are going to get an e-book once I have something ready. I have not forgotten you. This is also something that I love to do. But that sadly does not pay the bills for me, for that reason I depend on donations since during quiet times in Iceland I do not have a lot of traffic when it is quiet in Iceland and that means less advertisement income. I have extremely little income from Amazon Advertisement at the moment, since it is 5 – 10% of the price of an item when people buy something from Amazon. Clicks do not count or extremely little with Amazon.

I’ve been into volcanoes and earthquakes since I was 10 years old. So I know a lot about them, since I have not been afraid to collect information and read about the volcano activity in Iceland. So my knowledge of this subject is the one of an expert, even if I am not educated by official school in Iceland in this field. So I can’t have a job in it, since hiring non-educated people in certain fields almost never happens in Iceland. It is just part of the quality standards that are in place in the world. I see nothing wrong with this, since I can and do attend to this subject in my own way.

My main income comes from social welfare in Iceland. That income is however low based on current exchange rate of ISK to DKK (~22,00 ISK = 1 DKK) so I remain poor here in Denmark. I would also remain poor in Iceland (due to higher prices on everything) if I had the slightest interest in living there (I don’t, just to be clear on that). So supporting me helps me to do my work here and keep monitoring the volcanoes and earthquakes in Iceland.

Storms – Windy

Winter storm period has started in Iceland this year. It was later this year than last year, but the strength of the storms is around the same. For this week they are predicting at least one storm tomorrow and maybe a second after that. This leads to lower detection threshold on the Icelandic Meteorological Office SIL network and my geophone network in Iceland. This also means that sometimes many of my geophone stations look like this.

sktz.svd.13-November-2013
Wind on Skeiðflöt geophone station. This image is under Creative Common Licence. See CC Licence page for more details (above).

The bad weather does not rule out that something might be taking place. It might however rule out technical ability to detect it on the SIL network or my geophone network. Since strong wind noise is followed by strong ocean wave noise on the SIL network and my geophone network (mostly in south Iceland). All that can be done is to wait for better weather to see what is going on in the crust.

Quiet period in Iceland

Currently there appears to be quiet period taking place in Iceland. It has already lasted for around 3 weeks now. Based on the data it is impossible to know when it ends. Bad weather is also making it difficult to know if anything interesting is taking place. Since minor earthquakes get drowned out by the wind and ocean noise on the SIL stations. Since I write mostly about current activity in Iceland this type of quiet period do not leave me with a lot to write about. But if it gets prolonged I am going to try and find something to write about in Icelandic geology.

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Rate of eruptions in Iceland

Donation note: I am currently working on a new solution for people to support my work and effort here. It is still possible to donate directly via Paypal by using my email address (jonfr@8930a1.talbot.shared.1984.is) if you have Paypal account. I have removed the subscription option since I hope to be able close down my Paypal account no later than on 1-Febuary-2014. As things are turning out I am not going to use Skrill.com and at the moment I do not have any account with them.

Update on donations: Since my other options have not worked out. I am going to keep Paypal as an way to get donations. As explained before I can not have the regular donation button due to requirement that Paypal has. There is nothing I can do about it since I do not want to risk loosing my Paypal account since I am going to be using it.

There is a common believe that eruptions in Iceland happens in Iceland every 3 to 5 years. According to this believe the next eruption in Iceland should take place around the year 2014 to 2016. The reality of this is far more complex than common believe is in this matters. It is true that eruptions are common in Iceland, but it is not the same to say that eruption happens at regular intervals. For instance the longest break in 20th century since proper documentation of eruptions started was 7 years (Krafla 1984 and then Hekla in 1991). Then there are shorter time periods between eruptions as happened in the year 2011 when no more than three eruptions took place in that year. Two minor ones and one large one. The minor eruptions took place in Grímsfjall volcano (largest eruption in 140 years) and smaller eruptions in Katla volcano (lasted for ~10 hours) and in Hamarinn volcano (~16 hours). Then we had a minor explosion (no eruption) in Kverkfjöll volcano during the summer of 2013 [coverage link on it here and here].

It is not uncommon in Iceland to have several eruption from several volcanoes at the same time or over few month period during the year. It has happened in the history of Iceland and can happen again. It is also not uncommon not to have any eruption in Iceland for a long time and quiet scene last for several years. Currently it is quiet in Iceland but the history has shown that it is not always so. For more details on eruptions in Iceland I reccomend this blog post (jonfr.com) and this overview from Icelandic Meteorological Office.

Blog post updated at 22:10 UTC.
Blog post updated on 10-November-2013 at 23:40 UTC.

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Minor earthquake swarm on Reykjanes Ridge

Today (04-November-2013) at 04:03 UTC an minor earthquake swarm took place on the Reykjanes ridge. The largest earthquake in this swarm had the magnitude of 3,2 and the depth of 12,2 km.

131104_2130
Earthquakes on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

Earthquakes are no uncommon in this area and there have been several earthquake swarm in past few weeks. Currently there are no signs of volcano activity taking place at this location and there are no clues or suggestions that such event is about to take place at present time. The largest earthquake did appear clearly on my geophone network and it can be viewed here on my geophone website.

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Loose rocks fall down at Thingvellir national park

Today (02-November-2013) loose rock did fall down at popular hiking router in Thingvellir national park in Iceland. The rocks that did drop have estimated weight of around 2 tons for the largest ones. No damage took place and nobody was hurt following this rock slide. While not common it does happen that rock fall down in Thingvellir since frost and water slowly crack the rock and make it loose with time.

grjothrun_0.svd.02-November-2013
The rocks that did drop down. Copyright of this image belongs to Rúv and the original person who took this picture.
img_1245_2.svd.02-November-2013
The rocks have been marked off. Copyright of this image belongs to Rúv and original person who took this image.

There is a reaming risk of more rock falling down in this area. When they might come down is impossible to know for sure. Currently the employees of the Thingvellir national park are estimating the risk of more rock coming down at this location.

Icelandic news about this

Stórgrýti hrundi úr barmi Almannagjár (Rúv.is. Icelandic)
Meta líkur á frekara hruni (Rúv.is, Icelandic)

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Donations needed for November

So life goes on. At least I am trying to pretend that is what is going on with me. The fact is however that my life is not much of a life since the fact is that my money issues drag along with me for now and I am sure it is going to drag along with me once I have paid all my debt down (moving is expensive as was the case for me 1 year ago). The problem is the crazy economic policies in Iceland, currently the exchange rate for Icelandic krona (ISK) is 21,98 against DKK (Danish krona). That means I am paying 22,73 ISK for 1 DKK (at Visa exchange rate) and that is not making my life easy. It has also been unofficial policy in Iceland to keep the disabled and people with issues (like having an Asperger’s syndrome that makes it really hard to me to get a regular job that pays decently) at poverty levels. That is no surprise since it comes from a dark history in Iceland that took place mostly before the year 1970. Back then it was custom to keep poor people poor by economic means or by force if nothing else worked.

Kids of poor people where sent to other farms to work (this took place mostly before the 1900, but it did last something towards to 1940 – 1960ish. I am not sure how long), disabled people where forced to live on farms and if nothing else the state paid the farmer who hosted the people an minimal amount to take care of them. But for most part, poor people and often disabled people where slaves in Iceland (before 1900). The laws that require people to hire them to an farm and work there have de-facto never been removed from Icelandic laws to this day.

What this to do with my money problems and issues. The Icelandic culture (you are never going to get many Icelanders to admit this) retains many of this old view on disabled people, the view that people disability is somehow there own fault and they should just accept what they are given from Icelandic state. Even if it is so low amount that there is no possibility to survive off this amount. This is done intentionally and here is a good example of this. Way back in the year 2004 when I started to live on my own I just got around 89.000 ISK (541,26€ on today exchange rate, at the exchange rate of the year 2004 it was just 1016,21€. Today that is 964,54€ or 158.600 ISK, in euro my income has not increased at all) as an disability welfare from Icelandic state. It was not until 2006 – 2007 that welfare got up to barley liveable levels and then in the year 2008 the economic collapse came and my income did go straight to hell in terms of how much I have to pay the bills and such things. The reason I moved to Denmark (to start with. My plan is to move to Austria when I can, not sure when that is going to happen. I want mountains and earthquakes since I cannot move to Azores Islands for several reasons) is to avoid this issue, since I am sure that Icelandic economy is going to collapse again soon in few years time.

I am stuck in a trap, the trap is normally called poverty trap [see also Poverty]. So far my attempts to break out if have turned out to be fruitless. I am not going to try and give up on this since this is my only change to change my life. But at the moment it is not going so well. I have low income of this blog due to low traffic (no eruption or earthquakes taking place in Iceland or Europe at the moment) at the moment. I am sure my income is going to increase temporary in terms or advertisement income when next eruption takes place.

Until that happens I have to count on support from my regular readers. Since without that support I am not sure I can do this job. Since it is a lot of work to keep track on what earthquake swarms and volcano are doing on daily basis. My work schedule is most hours of during the week, even when I take a break from writing on this blog once in a while. My other work can be found here below, since it is a links to my other websites.

Jón Frímann bloggar (Icelandic, English, Danish (soon), German (soon))
Jarðfræði bloggið (Icelandic version of this blog)
Canary Island geology blog (Canary Island geology blog)
Europe geology blog (Earthquakes and volcano activity in Europe)
Spacewatch (blog about Space related matters)
Falkland Islands blog (All about Falkland Islands. Work in progress)
Jón Universe (My fictional short stories. Updated regularly)

Information on how to support me can be found here. I have written all the instruction on how to send me a donation there as clearly as I can. Thanks for the support!