According to a news by Icelandic Meteorological Office. There is enough stress in the Tjörnes Fracture Zone for magnitude 6.8 earthquake. This is based on a study (Metzger o.fl., 2011). When and where this stress, or if it is going to be released in one 6.8 magnitude earthquake is impossible to know for sure. As it is impossible to predict behavior of this type of earthquake activity.
The circle shows the odd earthquake swarm on 22.10.2012 that where more east then the main earthquake swarm in TFZ. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.
For the time being, at least while the earthquake swarm is currently ongoing. It is best to keep an eye out for it and any sudden changes in it. But as I sad before. It is impossible to predict this events. All that can be done is to wait and hope for the best when this earthquake activity do starts to happen.
Current earthquake swarm in TFZ is still ongoing. But earthquake activity so far continues to drop at the same rate as before.
Icelandic Meteorological Office news
Earthquake activity offshore North Iceland continues (en.vedur.is)
Jón, this blog post speculates on the possibility of some magma intrusion under sediments in the TFZ area.
Maybe you could have a better analysis on this.
http://vulkan.blog.is/blog/vulkan/entry/1264367/
This is not magma intrusion into the rock. His analyse is flawed. While this is fault valley, it has no volcano activity (it has hydro-thermal activity common all over Iceland). This area of TFZ is comparable with this on located in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabash_Valley_Fault_System
No volcano activity. Just earthquakes. The difference is that TFZ is more complex and is just not single fault valley as Wabash valley fault system.
Good explanation. Thanks, Jón.
I would think it has released that much over a longer period. There have been so many earthquakes, and they must all add up to a very large stress release. the 6.8 would assume it went all in a single earthquake.
The magnitude scale is logarithmic. You’d need one thousand M4s to release the same amount of energy than a single M6. Hence, the total stress relieved is not yet in the level of M6.8, maybe M5.5 to M6 only…