Day: January 15, 2014

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Increased conductivity continues in Múlakvísl glacier river (Katla volcano)

Last week I wrote about increased conductivity in Múlakvísl glacier river that comes from Mýrdalsjökull glacier (Katla volcano). This trend has continued into second week with the conductivity. The conductivity in Múlakvísl is now on the range of ~327 to ~360 µS/cm. There has also been a slight increase in water levels following this change in Múlakvísl glacier river. Normal value for this time of year according to Icelandic Meteorological Office is ~180 µS/cm in Múlakvísl glacier river. Since 31-December-2013 the conductivity in Múlakvísl glacier river has always been over 220 µS/cm.

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Conductivity in Múlakvísl glacier river. Top: conductivity. Middle: Harmonic tremor. Bottom: Windspeed. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

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Animated image from Icelandic Meteorological Office showing changes in Múlakvísl glacier river during this time period. Original image can be found here. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

No harmonic tremors or earthquakes have been detected (besides normal activity) following this changes. What is taking place is that a cauldron in Mýrdalsjökull glacier is now leaking melt water that has been built up due to hydrothermal (hot springs) activity under the glacier. So far it does not appear that current changes in Múlakvísl glacier river mean anything at all. If that is going to change is impossible to know at this point.

Icelandic News about this

Rafleiðni há en enginn órói mælist (mbl.is)

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Post updated at 19:09 UTC on 15-January-2014.
Post updated at 20:49 UTC on 15-January-2014.

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Main geophone network computer is down due to a hardware failure

As many have noticed, my webicorder website is no longer updating and has not done so since 9-December-2013. The reason why it is not updating is simple. The computer that handles the updates is now totally ruined. It was the victim of the capacitor plague that took place few years ago, the main-board that failed is from the year 2007 (7 years old) and it clear that this issue with capacitor was not over when this motherboard was made.

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The blown capacitors on the motherboard. As can be seen, it is totally ruined. Image is under Creative Commons Licence, please see CC Licence page for more details.

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Second picture of the damage to the capacitors on the motherboard. Image is under Creative Commons Licence, please see CC Licence page for more details.

This failure was so bad it crashed my router and internet connection until I was able to reboot it when I got back home. Cost of a new computer (motherboard+cpu+graphic card+memory) is 268,16€ (350€ if I want to have some space to adjust if something isn’t available) according to my best estimate. I just want to buy and install it my self. I guess the hard drive is fine, but I have not yet tested it and I guess that I won’t test it until I get new computer. As my finances currently stand there is no hope that I am going to be able to afford this any time soon. So any donations in order to help me fix this problem are welcomed.

Without the webicorder website and this computer I am not going to be able to post high resolutions of earthquakes and it is not going to be possible to monitor earthquake swarms in Iceland in close to real time. Since this computer did handle all geophones in one place. It also uploaded the images for the geophones and I had on it the software to locate and analyse earthquakes that took place in Iceland and worldwide. This computer also allowed me to monitor for earthquakes in Denmark and other nearby countries if anything major did happen (earthquakes over magnitude 5,0). I hope that I can replace this hardware soon. Just how soon that is going to be I do not know at the moment.