Posted on by Jón Frímann

First earthquake detected on Skeiðflöt geophone

This here is the first earthquake that I properly detect on my new geophone at Skeiðflöt farm. This is an ML2.0 earthquake in Katla volcano caldera according to IMO automatic SIL network. Even if there is high noise level I was still able to record it clearly. I might have recorded smaller earthquakes already. But they do not appear clearly so it is hard for me to be sure at the moment if I actually recorded them due to high levels of background noise.


The ML2.0 earthquake in Katla volcano caldera. This is based on automatic data and might not be 100% correct. This picture is released under CC licence. See Licence web page for more details.

This is promising for many reasons. It means that I can see earthquakes clearly even if there is high background noise level taking place at Skeiðflöt geophone. This also means that I am clearly going to see harmonic tremors and other events in Katla volcano, even in the glacier also. But this also depends on the noise level at the time. I do hope that the noise level is lower in summer then it is during the winter.

8 Replies to “First earthquake detected on Skeiðflöt geophone”

  1. Katla looking unrest. Three earthquake 2 in last hours, not good quality, but seems that the depth was deeper than 5km, so it means entrance of new magma into the chamber. We should expect a lot of these earthquakes before an eruption.

  2. Some more EQs, but there is a great distance between the places. Looks like Katla is surrounded by…yes, by what? Dykes?

  3. Hi.

    Cant you lower the gain of the Skeiðflöt geophone on WinSDR? Just for curiosity whats the main frequency of the noise?

    I´m also using L15B Geophones, but i dont have Larry Cochrane boards..i dont know for sure what sensitivity i should expect from the geophones, do you have *.psn files from low magnitude (<2.5) to compare the noise base with the seismic waves?

    Regards,
    Geo.

    1. I do not have any access to the geophone, once I have set it up. It takes me about one day to get to this location. I have also standard in use and I set the gain by that. So all of my geophone stations have about the same settings in use.

      But this noise level changes with the weather. So the noise should drop when the most storms are over in few months time.

  4. I’ve been watching webcam from Bigthink for Katla quite steadily. I’m wondering if there are other webcams available. It’s impossible to make assumptions based on what I’m seeing, but it is sure facinating to watch. I’ve see this camera shake many times over the last few days, since I’m not there it feel anything I just consider it must be wind. I do want to ask a question about it though. I’m assuming it’s a night vision camera? How accurate is it for color? I’m asking because mostly the clouds are grey or white. But, sometimes I see green clouds rise. They are striking in appearance.

    1. Which camera are you talking about? If these cameras are shaking, its wind. And since we had quite some storm in the last few days, this fits pretty good.

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