Month: February 2023

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Small earthquake swarm in Bárðarbunga volcano

Today (7. February 2023) an small earthquake swarm took place. This earthquake swarm started at 11:21 UTC with a magnitude Mw3,2 earthquake and lasted until 12:05 UTC. Other earthquakes were smaller in magnitude.

Green star in the west side of Vatnajökull glacier, were the largest earthquake took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. Few other red dots at the same location show the smaller earthquakes.
Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

This shows that Bárðarbunga volcano continues to inflate at high rate. Based on what happened before the eruption in 2014 to 2015 in Bárðarbunga volcano. When the earthquake stop for long time period it means Bárðarbunga volcano is ready for an eruption. While the earthquake activity happens is it is doing today, it means inflation continues in Bárðarbunga volcano.

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Earthquake with magnitude of Mw7,5 in South Turkey

Today (06. February 2023) at 10:24 UTC an earthquake with magnitude of Mw7,5 took place. This earthquake took place less than 12 hours after the Mw7,8 earthquake took place 50 km south of this earthquake. USGS is reporting (seen on CNN) that 10000 people might have died in this earthquakes because of were it is located. The real number might be higher. News is also reporting that 582 people have died in Syria because of this earthquakes. There is heavy aftershock activity in this area and the second largest aftershock had a magnitude of Mw6,7 at 01:28 UTC.

Earthquakes as shown by USGS map. Large orange dots showing the earthquake activity in different sized rings. Size of rings depends on magnitude. More then dozen rings.
Earthquake activity as it is on USGS map. Public domain/USGS.

Information about the Mw7,5 earthquake can be found here at EMSC and here at USGS. Information about the Mw6,7 earthquake can be found here at EMSC website.

Update (22:38 UTC)

The magnitude Mw7,5 earthquake has been confirmed to be an aftershock by USGS.

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Earthquake with magnitude of Mw7,8 in Turkey

Today (6. February 2023) at 01:17 UTC an earthquake with magnitude of Mw7,8 took place in south Turkey. Damage is to be expected in this type of earthquake. This earthquake was felt over a wide area. Because of high electric price, I’ve been unable to run my seismometer in Denmark and I did not record this earthquake for that reason. At this magnitude this earthquake was recorded all over Europe in professional and citizen science seismometers.

EMSC information can be found here and USGS information can be found here. Links can stop working without warning.

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Increase in larger earthquakes in Katla volcano (there’s no risk of eruption)

This might not be anything at the writing of this article. Since there’s little earthquake activity in Katla volcano at the moment, its well below background noise. Over the last several months I’ve noticed an slight increase in larger earthquakes in Katla volcano, this might not mean anything, but I do not remember having seen this type of pattern in earthquake activity in Katla volcano before. Currently the earthquake activity is almost none and that means that for now there’s no risk of an eruption.

Mýrdalsjökull glacier and the caldera shown as a elongated circle inside the glacier on the map from Icelandic Met Office. In the central caldera, there's a red dot showing the newest and largest earthquake of today.
Minimal earthquake activity in Katla volcano today (3. February 2023). Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Largest earthquake today (3. February 2023) had a magnitude of Mw2,7. This is what has been happening in recent months. This one or two earthquakes that are slightly larger than what I consider normal. There’s a chance this might be normal and nothing more is going to happen, but for now, it is impossible to know for sure what is happening.

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Iceland Geology YouTube channel

I’ve made the chose to start Iceland Geology channel. This is going to allow me to upload geology information in video format. How that is going to evolve is unclear, but I am going to work on this slowly over the next few years.

Iceland Geology YouTube channel can be found here. I have uploaded few videos, but since the channel is just recently in use I am still going trough verification process with YouTube. That limits my number of uploads until those are lifted. Since I am for now just uploading older videos that I’ve recorded in last few years.

Information for webicorders (online again from May or June) and e-mail postlist signup website are now under Iceland Geology menu option.