Today (24-October-2017) at 14:18 UTC a magnitude 4,1 earthquake took place in south part of the Bárðarbunga volcano caldera. Few moments later at 14:54 UTC a magnitude 3,4 earthquake took place and few other earthquakes followed.
The earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.
What is different now is that the earthquake activity is now happening in south part of the caldera. Close to the area where deep cauldrons have appeared due to shallow magma at this location. This makes the earthquake activity at this highly interesting and possibly highly dangerous if magma has now started to push it’s way up at this location. A small eruption at this location could result in a serious glacier flood, even if such an eruption only lasted for few hours.
The magnitude 4,1 earthquake as it appeared on my geophone in Dellukot. This image is under Creative Commons License, please see CC License for more details.
The magnitude 4,1 earthquake as it appeared on my geophone in Böðvarshólar. This trace has been filtered at 4Hz. This image is under Creative Commons License, please see CC License for more details.
It remains a question if an earthquake is going to happen in north-east part of the Báðarbunga volcano caldera in next few days. That seems to happen when a earthquakes takes place in south part of the caldera. I don’t know why that happens, it is just seems to do.
Article updated at 23:48 UTC. Text fixes.
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