This morning at 05:48 UTC an earthquake swarm started on the Reykjanes Ridge. The earthquake swarm is believed to have been created by an dike intrusion in the area. Around 40 earthquakes have been recorded so far, the largest ones have had the size over ML3.0 in magnitude. But at the moment the earthquake swarm has stopped or is doing some idle time. As this earthquake swarm was created by an dike intrusion. It is not impossible that is going to resume in few hours to days time. But it is hard to know for sure what happens next in this area.
The area of activity. Please note that some earthquakes have wrong location due the distance from the SIL network. Copyright of this picture belongs to IMO.
This activity of dike intrusions suggests that this area of Reykjanes Ridge is getting more active then it has been since the year 1926, when the last confirmed eruption took place. But there might have been unconfirmed eruptions on the Reykjanes Ridge in the years 1966 and in 1970. It is also most likely that dike intrusion activity is going to continue for some time now. But as I sad above, it is impossible to know how long the breaks are going to be between activity episodes. Last large earthquake swarm in this area took place in early 2010 (Erik blog post about it can be found here). That activity was about one month before the eruption in Eyjafjallajökull volcano.
Largest earthquakes of this earthquake swarm appeared clearly on my geophones where the noise level was not too high. They can be viewed here on the 24 hour plot.
Icelandic news about this activity. Use Google translate and hope make sense of it.
Skjálftahrinan í rénun (Rúv.is)
Skjálftar við Eldey (Rúv.is)
Jarðskjálfti upp á 3,8 stig (mbl.is)
Á fjórða tug skjálfta við Eldeyjarboða (DV.is)
Hi a,,
a new USGS volcano observatory!
the California Volcano Observatory (CALVO). Check out the details:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/calvo/
Iceland seems to be having a quiet day so far; did the swarm on the MAR relieve some pressure?
I would just like to take the opportunity to thank Jon for setting up his site and especially his geophone network, it gives the wider public with an interest to get more informative facts than appear in the media. That and his informed comment have thus far corrected some misinterpretations of data as it appears from the Iceland met office site. Cheers Jon, we appreciate your work.