The activity in Bárðarbunga volcano continues to slowly increase, at the moment there seems to be a small lowdown in the activity but that might change without warning. There has been some change in the activity inside the caldera and that is important. There appears that two spots are forming inside the south part of the caldera, suggesting that magma has found a weak spot in the crust plug. The space between them is not big, at most 800 meters to 2 km. The weak spots might not erupt, the magma that is pushing up at this location might fail breaking trough the crust if the pressure is high enough to break trough the crust.
The green star marks the second weak spot in the caldera of Bárðarbunga volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Iceland Met Office.
Yesterday (02-Februar-2016) signal appeared on the SIL stations around Bárðarbunga volcano. This signal was seen good distance from Bárðarbunga volcano, this does not appear to any type of failure in the SIL network, I’ve been looking for such and not found any. What this signal means is unclear and why it happens is unknown.
The strange signal starts around midnight at 02-February-2016 and continues until at least 05:00 UTC. It is not known why it happens. Copyright of this image belongs to Iceland Met Office.
The largest earthquake in past 48 hours had a magnitude 3,0 and was in the newly formed weak spot in the north-east part of the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera. Both weak spots in the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera have been having earthquakes this week and past week, in most of the caldera there has been some earthquake activity taking place. In late August-2014 the north-east caldera rim did leak some magma, creating a row of cauldrons above it. Both above the dyke and on the cauldron rim. I did try to find pictures of the cauldron in question, but I didn’t have any luck doing so.
Magma pressure inside Bárðarbunga volcano seems to be increasing faster then I expected. Something might have changed inside the volcano, or deep underneath it allowing for magma going inside the volcano at higher rate then before. It is not possible to know when next eruption in Bárðarbunga volcano happens, the time frame (based on historical data) is from 1 year and up to 10 years when a eruption cycle is going on.
