Posted on by Jón Frímann

Tremor pulses in Hamarinn volcano (most likely)

During the past two weeks there have been tremor pulses in Hamarinn volcano (is claimed to be part of Bárðarbunga volcano system), at least most likely that volcano. But it might also be a volcano that I call Skrokkalda Volcano (other name might be Hágöngur volcano) (it has no entry on GVP web page, I do not know why). But given recent history I find it unlikely to be the case.

This harmonic tremors might be due to dike intrusions. I find it unlikely to be from a man made lake called Hágöngulón that is in this area. The harmonic tremor pulses look like sharp spikes on the tremor plot on the Skrokkalda SIL station.


Harmonic tremor spikes from Hamarinn volcano. Copyright of this picture belongs to Iceland Met Office.

This pattern of harmonic tremor spikes was seen all last year and all of the year 2009 from what I can remember. I do not have tremor charts from that period. But however this suggests that more magma has now started to flow into Hamarinn volcano. But there was a small volcano eruption (it seems so, given the flood that took place in July) in Hamarinn volcano last summer (summer 2011). What happens next is a good question.

This process of inflow of magma seems to without earthquakes, or close to it. I do not know why that is and I have no ideas that explain it.

637 Replies to “Tremor pulses in Hamarinn volcano (most likely)”

  1. Off topic, I just love it that my avatar on here looks like a suprised volcano, “Ooops, sorry I thought I was just de-gassing.”

    1. I wonder if they have used Giggle confuser to translate spannish news… 🙂
      But, guess that they are happy to point a volcanic finger at someone else for once 🙂

      1. I do not really think any Icelander would make that mistake…
        I still think Giggle is to blame. The only odd thing is that the Icelander doing the giggling didn’t find it odd that the Canaries had more volcanos than Iceland. Most Icelanders I have met are very proud of their 93 volcanos, and always state that they have the world record.
        It might also just have been a typo.

      2. Maybe they just intended to say 500 craters or something like that.
        Or it was a premonitory message and they know how the canaries will look like after december 2012… 🙂

      3. Wikipedia has 46. It also states that Iceland has about 130 volcanic mountains.

        Is there an official list of volcanoes out somewhere in the wilderness of the Internet?

  3. Magnitude ML 3.5
    Region ICELAND
    Date time 2011-10-09 17:36:35.6 UTC
    Location 63.62 N ; 19.11 W
    Depth 1 km
    Distances 149 km E Reykjavík (pop 113,906 ; local time 17:36:35.6 2011-10-09)
    148 km E Hafnarfjörður (pop 22,289 ; local time 17:36:35.6 2011-10-09)
    61 km E Vestmannæyjar (pop 4,203 ; local time 17:36:35.6 2011-10-09)

      2. Can there be any reason why Jons Helicorder would not pick up an 3.5 within Katla?

      4. OK, makes sense. Even after considering the sentence “Source parameters provided by another agency” on that other EQ page.

      5. Odd isn’t it, is showing as 90% quality too. Where do EMSC get their data from?

      6. From IMO I assume. The 90% means the quake is most probably present, but it hasn’t been checked. So it will probably get downgraded to M2.2 or something.

      9. I have tried to find that SIL, but non of them are showing the spikes they should if something was wrong.
        I think they have an integration problem in an algoritm. It seems to happen only to those that are just north of Habunga.

        But, I might be wrong though. I guess they are getting spooked too over IMO.

  5. Funny, a 3.5 at 90% on IMO, no sign of it on Jón’s helicorders. Do I trust IMO or Jón’s recorders?

    1. ok ok ok – I am messing this up… Just wait and see, somewhere down the line I will understand more of this.

      1. It’s certainly not showing on Jon’s helicorder .
        Old Coeboy I think you are in good company here. I don’t understand it either.
        If it was a 3+ Mag then it would be showing on all the other graphs around Katla and beyond. There is no quake recorded that big at 17.36
        Maybe someone is just winding us amateur watchers up :)……
        or maybe it’s those sheep again!

    2. Well I used to look at 90% for a tremor and think that wouldn’t change much but from a 3.5 downgrading to a 1.8 is quite a big difference as I view it!! At least I know knoe to view them with suspicion until it is 99% corrected.

    1. Now we see it . Now we don’t! Someone may be bored with their Sunday evening shift work!

      1. I imagine a guy at IMO having 2 windows open – one in wich he plays with what they publish, and the other with us dancing salsa after every click he performs… 🙂

  9. “Never mind! Just check out strain at Hekla. Burfell looks jittery.”

    Looks like it overindulged last night and now has the DT’s. (delirium tremens)

    1. Note: The red on Eyjafjallajökull and Fimmvörðuháls is from the background image and not from recent quakes.

      1. Horked?
        I hork
        You hork
        He/she/it horks
        I am horking
        I have been horked.
        I will be horked, he was horked.
        Beware of the behorker!

        Ah, the grammar of new words 🙂

      2. Wait for the other guy, was it “grammar police”, to see that one… 🙂
        He will spare a blue pill tonight after this…

    3. CORRECTED Longitude.

      http://i54.tinypic.com/1se23d.png

      Ignore the previous one.

      The cantankerous part of this program is that it likes to determine what you want rather than what you tell it.

      You can tell when it does that by the program generated coords not matching the background coords. I noticed the alignment issue with the latitude but failed to notice the longitude was off on the previous version. They both match now.

      Sorry for the error.

      1. Thank you; an interesting plot. Am I correct in deducing that activity is currently focused at the sites of the 1755 eruption. between the site of the 1999 / 1823 eruptions and mostly at a possible new site to the NE of these?

      2. Lurking, thank you very much for the informative plot! Exactly what I meant. – Surprisingly high activity at Godabunga. The old eruption sites are full of activity. What is going on in the south flank? Where will she go, when she goes?

      3. Interesting how clear the oddity of Godabunga became.
        First you have the tail running straight to Fimmvörduhals.
        Than there seems to not be much in the connection way between Godabunga and Katla with what seems to be a clear delineation running along on the outside of the caldera where the quakes of both Godabunga and Katla stops without making contact. Not counting the 5 straggling quakes there. Not enough to say anything about it, probably ice-quakes.
        But the connection to Fimmvörduhals is very clear.
        One should also note that there are no quakes between Fimmvörduhals and Eyjafjallajökull.

        1. I still think that Godabunga is a feature of its own untill someone actually comes up with some kind of hard evidence.
        2. I am not that sure either that Fimmvörduhals was caused by Eyjafjallajökull. I know this is controversial to say the least. But there is actually equal amount of evidence that the eruption was not caused by Eyjafjallajökull. First of all, the Godabunga quakes have been running down to Fimmvörduhals for more than fifteen years. Not Fimmvörduhals to Eyjafjallajökull. Second and even more telling. Fimmvörduhals and Eyjafjallajökull did not erupt the same type of magma. Yes that could be explained by chrystalizing inside of the rhyolitic mush of Eyjafjallajökull. But two things cannot be explained that way, and that is the higher content of REMs in Fimmvörduhals lava than inside the Eyjafjallajökull ashes. This is a sign that Fimmvörduhals magma came from greater depth than the Eyjafjallajökull. But the most damning is that the isotopy of thorium decay in the ash and the lava is not the same.

        I do not have a sample of the 1918 lava from Katla to compare with, and it would also be to old by now. But I will sure as heck get one so that I can have the thorium isotopic decay checked when Katla erupts.

        What is that thing with thorium isotopy decay?
        Well, you can either check how old it is from being reset, or you can see how deep the magma comes from with it.
        Hotspot deep origin magmas have very low amount of decay, old magmas get a particular decay (Eyjafjalla have that one, and a lot of decay to boot), shallow magmas have another pattern, Eyjafjalla have traits of that too. Fimmvörduhals has neither shallow or old signature.
        Grimsvötn had almost no decay, but that is not so strange since the magma is both new (great turnaround of magmas) and deep… very very deeeeeeeeep magma.
        I know, this changes due to type of lava erupted, but not that much.
        I will stop rambling now…

    4. Beautiful plot, Lurking, thank you!

      I do have one question, however, regarding something that was probably not on the background map. Do you know, and would you be able to indicate on the plot, where the 2011 sub-glacial eruption took place?

      1. I don’t have that data, but I can go poke around for it. Jon is better suited to find that since he can actually read Icelandic.

        Ref the Late Saturday Mag 3.0 quake near Hellisheiðarvirkjun.

        Did anyone notice the depth was about 2.3km? That’s about the level where the pressure gradient crosses the supercritical point for water.

        What are the odds that water crossed into a lower pressure area and flashed to steam, setting off and releasing whatever stress was already in the area?

      4. Interesting, there doesn’t seem to be that much earthquake activity around the 1918 site. I would have thought it would be in the middle of one of your clusters. 🙂

        I was wondering because it seems like that smallish (?) 2011 eruption would either: a) open a conduit for a future eruption, or b), relieve the pressure in that area and the next eruption would be in a different location. Completely opposite results! Does anyone have an idea whether either of these are plausible?

      5. The 1918 site is more likely to be silent than not, this due to the remnant heat from the eruption is making the ground more ductile (think rubber-band or pessar here).

    1. Thank you.

      The damage done by the jökulhlaups is awesome too. All the ash is from Lady E and Grimsvotn?

  13. nice link James. Good to see you around again (ok maybe it’s me who’s rare here). The scene where the helicopter’s shadow falls on the ice is great for scale. There was obviously a lot of ice melt involved. They are pretty big sinks in the glacier.

    1. Hi Bruce, Oh? me?.. I’m just an avid reader / occasional poster here.. Maybe you’ve confused me with someone else? But thanks for the sentiment! 🙂

      You’re right.. they are serious blocks of ice! When you see it on that scale, you wonder if ‘small’ is really the right word! Makes you realise just what’s coming!

  14. From Luisport’s post at 13:40 – It was AP letting everyone know: Like all the Canary Islands, El Hierro was formed by volcanic activity. It has some 500 volcanic cones.

    Come on AP for crying out loud. Just another example of misinformation from a “reliable” media source.

    1. Considering that the substrata has taken up independent weekend fracking all by itself, with no-one operating any gear topside… yeah, I think I would be a bit concerned also.

      1. Yes…
        I would say this is the mother of all “runners”.
        It is now self powering. It might be to late by now, even if they stop the man-made fracking.
        If they continue I would say that the likelyhood of somethng going to hell is quite large. I do not though say it will cause an eruption. But it might set of a mag 5, the area is quite known to have those, sometimes in abundance.

        The minimum they should do is postpone any pumping untill the area has stabilized.

        But what the hork do I know? I only worked with it for five years… And I only saw 2 runners out of two possible attempts… Hm… Well… We are all behorken by it all. 🙂

      3. If this project is stopped, then i guess they will just move the rig to Krisuvik and deep drill and carbon frack the place to pieces.
        I find it very unlikely they will quit.
        The reason they are not very aggressive at Krafla is that she scares them, if a eruption took place while deep drilling or fracking the public would shut the whole thing down and the only thing those guys would be drilling would be their nose.
        It happened once, and if it happens again it will probably be permanent.
        Both Hengill and Krisuvik are close to a populated area, and as Carl points out sort of fracking is like playing with fire.

      5. Sometimes I am astounded at what happens when I talk. When we left the IDDP I had quite a few words about the drilling at Kraflavirkjun.
        What I meant was the risk of running the high pace and that it could adversely affect regular operations at Kraflavirkjun.
        It seems they took it the wrong way to say the least. Horrible idea if it is my fault.
        Oh hell, I guess someone will phone-scream me tomorrow. 😉

  16. Good news. I have ordered two geophone stations few moments ago. I not know when they are going to be in Iceland. But it can take up to three weeks until I get them.

    I am still missing a computer for Katla monitoring geophone station however. But I got a computer for Eyrarbakki geophone station.

    2. I might need to buy a new computer for the Katla geophone station. The cheapest computer that I have found costs $532,39, 343,26 GBP, 2.950,27 DKK, € 396,39. But that is without monitors and OS (I own Windows XP, I am just going to use that). But I rather want to get a used computer for this remote station. As it has a good chance of being damaged by a eruption (volcano ash).

      The computer,

      http://www.att.is/product_info.php?cPath=43_266&products_id=6417

      A cheap keyboard, 12,28 €.

      http://www.att.is/product_info.php?cPath=45_8&products_id=7594

      I might need to buy a wireless transmitter. But I am checking if I can use cable to connect to the router box. I really want to get used screen for the computer, as I rather do not want to buy a new screen for this computer.

      1. Jon what is the minimum spec you need on the Pc’s??? I have worked in computer industry for a number of years in the UK .Some recyclers sell refurbished computers monitors ect at very reasonable costs one company I can definatley recomend is http://www.ecochip.co.uk I have purchaced a lot of equipment from this company in the past without any problems .

  17. BTW you Hierro fans, I made a breakthrough in my plots.

    I was able to figure out how to re-grid the data points for various collections that I have been accumulating. I also managed to slice down the global oceanic sediment thickness into a manageable wad and combine that with the elevations and bathymetry for the island.

    What it gives me is the terrain, the ocean floor, and the likely bedrock layer. If I can remember where I put the Moho data I’ll be able to make a Hierro sandwich (pun intended) with the quakes interspersed in the layers.

    For now, I’m gonna go wander around the house.

    1. You really loved that one… I have to get up for my morning flight in 4 hours… Now I will be able to sleep without my goodnight Lurkng plot. Bad Lurking 🙂

  18. Hi Jon, excuse me if I’ve missed it before, but what will your monitoring station at katla be in the form of? Is it a pre-existing building / hut? & how close will it be to say, Katla’s summit? I don’t remember seeing too many power lines when I super-jeeped up the flood plain towards myrdalsjokull in the summer!

    1. Like all my geophone stations. It is going to be in a house with power and internet connection. So it is not going to be in a hut or some bad location. I cannot afford that type of setup. As it requires a lot of special hardware and tools that I cannot afford (Only IMO does along with Iceland university).

      So the location is save as it can be. But I try not to underestimate the power of a volcano.

      1. Brilliant, I really hope Katla waits for you to complete all this preparation (I’m sure she will!) because the results of your project will no doubt be absolutely stunning, just like Katla herself.

    1. And the @#$ part of it was that I was about halfway through the sandwich plot.

      The predominant frequency is low… about 1 hz. Wind at La Palma is about 8 kph. Pretty light. (and pretty north of El Hierro)

      I wish there was a way to localize the source. Last quake was a 1.1 at 27.5186°N 17.9038°W.

      3. In fact… I am of a new breed, a High Tech Luddite.

        Not as bad as Millerite, but distrustful of certain aspects of technology, especially those that are self serving and easily exploited.

      6. Seems that the smart money is at the “I can’t really believe this is a volcanic tremor” stage (a food commercial here … ‘I can’t really believe it’s butter!)

        Seen enough harmonic tremors on Etna … but then again I don’t have to be an expert.

      8. To my inexpert…ish eyes……..
        If I saw this on a Hekla or Katla graph…. I would be packing my bags if I was visiting in Southern Iceland!

      10. Or you do not see any quakes anymore because the tremors are too strong, and if it was a broken equipment the signal would probably not grow over time..

        Sander

      11. I really don’t know. Some other stations show tiny quakes but they do not appear in the list. Suppose the equipment could be broken and still produce a plot but that is just a guess from an amateur.

      13. I don’t know, I am just an amateur.. Only said what I’ve seen.. When grimsvotn erupted the tremor was accompanied by an eruption..

        Sander

      14. I see now that all stations of the Canary islands give the same signal, only with different strenght. This is weird.

      15. Might be very strong tremor.. when grimsvotn erupted you could also see it at many stations around Iceland

      1. On the Facebook link in spanish language (a.m., Sander) they say an eruption has started in the sea at about 3 km from La Restinga.
        (Hernandez Carmen:” Significa que ya tenemos erupcion. Submarina, y a tres kilometros de la Restinga.”)
        But there is not yet an offical confirmation for that.

        By the way, it seems to be typical that the “normal” earthquakes stop just before the eruption because the fracturing has been done and the dykes are open, and then comes the harmonic tremor, magma being “pumped” up to the surface. – But I’m neither an expert on this.

    2. Superb. Great idea to add the Moho. Sitting at work and feeling a little guilty of dreaming in front of your animated plot – not really paid for that… 🙂

    3. Luring you deserve some sort of accolade for all this. This latest one reminds me of a swarm of hornets! It’s excellent. Thank you.
      I think only a matter of time now. I cannot see this one subsiding.

      1. Luring????? Sorry Lurking… just started second morning coffee and it hasn’t kicked in yet! 🙂

      2. Oh I know that one!

        “Luring” in Swedish is a person that you really cant trust, who may try to trick you or fool you… but it is mostly used in a positive way, with a glint in your eye. Think mother and mischievous child 😉

        My first post, been following for a while 🙂

        And yes, another swede 😉

    4. Thank you Lurking, finally a plot that made sense 🙂
      I have had a problem with the official plots, but this one was stunningly clear and showing what I thought was happening all the time.

      What we are seeing is the formative quakes running up to an old chamber. Ie, the creation of the feeder tube. The point where it ends is the point where the chamber starts.
      Now it is probably open fully, and what we are seeing as tremor is magma roaring into the chamber. We should be seeing the hyper-inflation now as the magma-reservoir starts to expand violently as magma rushes in.

      1. That sounds like a plausible explanation!
        And those shallow depth earthquakes? Are they caused by the fact that the magma chamber is expanding now and the rock above cracks because of deformation?

  22. Thanks, great work as always.

    Another subject, I have read some speculation in spanish forums that there is some correlation between tides and seismic frequency, can someone do an hourly chart to relate tide heighs and earthquakes?

    1. Yeah, it can be done. Any specific locale?

      I’ll give you fair warning though, if there is any effect its gonna be easily lost in the noise floor. At best a tide will cause a quake to occur a few moments sooner or later than it would have normaly occured.

      The disparity in the forces involved is … HUGE.

      But… sleep comes first.

  23. @Lurking … They just get better and better … Thanks for all the good work. The plots really helps in the understanding of the events that are taking place

  24. Good morning Jon and everyone.
    Iceland looks beautiful this morning. Fresh snow on the mountains and a rosy sunrise.
    A really good view of Hekla now and the Dalek looks pretty awesome too 🙂
    http://www.ruv.is/hekla

    (Just to make sure… Is the Dalek a GPS receiver and it is sitting on Burfelli, a ridge opposite Hekla ? )

    http://www.ruv.is/katla is not working again for me.

    1. Good morning Diana,

      The RUV Katla cam works now but it has quite a different picture from the Mila cam. Mila shows a sunrise with nice colors on the icecap, shadows in the landscape and a blue sky, but RUV shows a cloudy day. I would choose the Mila cam to look at today!

    2. It is a communictions facility that is hardened due to location. It is phone, tv, internet roled into one large armoured Dalek that is supposed to survive a Hekla eruption without dying.
      Pantzer comunications mast! 🙂

    1. Think it is quite odd that there are no quakes listed since about 2100 yesterday and now all this strange pattern on the seismos…. either they have tripped over the cables for the seismometers or they have continuous tremor and not discrete quakes anymore …. ahem

      5. No need for quakes, the feeder tube to the magma-reservoir is now fully open, what we are seeing is magma rushing in to the reservoir. There will soon start to be quakes ontop of the magma-reservoir as the pressure in the reservoir gets to big for containment. We are now days away from an eruption, at most a week I think.
        When you start seeing more shallow quakes, then we have an incoming eruption within hours.

    2. If it is continuous tremor, it can only mean the conduits are already open. That could explain the lack of quakes. What’s next? Magma flows until it meets resistance again, this time closer to surface. Then we’ll have a new swarm of quakes near the site of imminent eruption, and then kaboom…

      3. Anywhere from today to a week…
        Depends on how much magma needs to flow in to build up sufficient pressure on the rock roof top to make it fly away, so to speak.

      4. So the longer it takes, the more magma rushes in and the bigger the eruption :P? Or is that reasoning to easy?

      6. No one knows, but give it some time to fill the volume up. I will have a very close look at it between wednesday and saturday – but that it completely incompetent and feeling-based “guesstrapolation” from the little scientific background I have gathered about this case…

      7. Comment was being written while my secretary came in with an urgent question. Sh.. For once I allow myself a little post it comes ridiculously repeating 3 people’s statements… 🙂

      10. Looking at the tremors over there – yeah, well, maybe don’t wait ’til wednesday to follow close…
        Guesstrapolation wasn’t the best thing to do, I guess, erm…

  26. The pattern looks VERY regular tom, it even appears to follow the tidal pattern…. Could be water attracted through underground tunnels or even meltingwater? Would that fall into the same freq-bands?

      1. If it is on the bottom of the sea, we wont see much happening..
        Hope everybody will be safe there on the island..

      2. That’s why I wait for something more official to be sure what the local fisherman has seen…

    1. Time to invest in Hamsters and Wheels.
      I got my household fuel bill on Friday. I am pleased as putting on several more layers of clothes and switching off the heating actually has saved me money even though the cost of gas and electricity here has risen 10 x faster than my static pension amount. Maybe I should get a drill and start fracking in my vegetable plot!!!

      1. Filled my tank for the heating on wednesday – we can meet for a coffee and cry together…
        I’d like to rentabilize my dog’s “production”, so I could get something of the money for his food back… But drilling is always good.
        Geologists and drilling is a special thing, you know. It’s like with us joking. It’s not because you reached the ground (as your joke was very, very bad) that you couldn’t drill (and get really “underground-bad”)… I try to stop myself going into details about how this affects our relationships with women, after detailed surface /morphology analysis and so on… Yeah, well, sorry, you see the beginning of a drilling project – was just to show what I mean… Ehm… Go El Hierro… Or not. Whatever…

    1. I am not sure since I am not an expert at all, but I think lots of steam 😛 and maybe some small ash emission.. Depends also on the depth I think, if it is some km’s below the sea surface it will probably be bubbles, steam, and small ash emission. When it’s on the coastline a smaller amount of water is on top of the magma then we will see more ash and steam 😛

      Sander

      5. I think that they are trying to say the following; if you don’t want to have your balls boiled get the hell out of the water!

      1. I have been several times on the Canary islands – last time this summer on La Palma, the island next to El Hierro, and I’d say, it’s just the normal trade winds and the clouds they bring with them daily to the west side of the islands.

    1. Noah sent out a raven and a dove.
      I suggest a Greater Black backed Gull and a cormorant.
      If they come back coughing and smelling of bad eggs they found it!

  48. This is a harmonic tremor that is appearing on El Hierro tremor plot. From what I can tell this is a growing eruption. But that suggests a fissure eruption that is currently expanding. The eruptions appears to have started around 04:20 UTC.

    This is almost the same thing as did happen in Eyjafjallajökull volcano, when the fissure did open up there. It was a quiet start to a volcano eruption, as we all remember.

    Nothing in the int. news yet.

      1. I can register for you account. But I had to disable registration due to loads of what I think is a spam bots registering to this site.

        I have not yet done the cleaning house that I need to do. Until that happens, new registrations are closed.

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