Posted on by Jón Frímann

Inflation starts again in Eyjafjallajökull volcano

After a few months of a period of stability in Eyjafjallajökull volcano after the eruption ended on the 28th of May 2010. There seems to be more instability starting again in Eyjafjallajökull volcano. This instability can so far only be seen on GPS sensors around the volcano. So far the inflation that is starting at medium rate, about 5mm on every 24 hours or so. This is clear when a early results (not error corrected) are checked from Icelandic Met Office GPS network. The trigger for the current instability appears to be a sharp deflation that took place in Eyjafjallajökull volcano few days ago.


Picture is from Icelandic Met Office, copyright of this picture belongs to them. Click on the picture for higher resolution.

Automatic GPS data from 21st of December 2010. The GPS station name is THEY and is on the south slope of Eyjafjallajökull volcano. The sharp deflation appears clearly on the GPS automatic data (not error corrected) and is followed by a sharp inflation period that is currently ongoing. I got a email from a expert that tells me that volcano ash can interfere with the GPS signal. But this does not change my opinion on that a inflation is about to start in Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

It currently remains unclear if this inflation period in Eyjafjallajökull volcano is going to continue. At current time the inflation in Eyjafjallajökull volcano is going to continue. It is also clear that today Eyjafjallajökull volcano is few weeks from re-starting the eruption, as it has not inflated enough to do so. But what is unclear is if this inflation and inflow of new magma under Eyjafjallajökull volcano is going to move around older magma that currently is higher up in the Eyjafjallajökull volcano plumbing after the eruption started earlier this year. For the moment the only that can be done is to wait and see what happens next.

Wikipedia articles on Eyjafjallajökull volcano

Eyjafjallajökull
2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull

Text updated at 23:49 UTC on 21st of December 2010.

130 Replies to “Inflation starts again in Eyjafjallajökull volcano”

  1. Another one to join the party… i remember if this inflaction isn’t related more to activity in Katla?

  2. Personally, from an amateurs point of view, I don’t expect this temporary inflation to be of any significance, regarding the deflation that happened the last week. In my opinion this feels just like the volcano restores to original setting after the deflation. But we’ll see, the future will tell us.

  3. I’m only 10 days to fly to Iceland…. so, I hope it only erupts later.
    I want to see Hekla and Eyjafjallajokull erupting at the same time!

    Last time, Eyja erupted twice within a year, and then it stopped again 6 months, before Katla erupts. Following this pattern Eyja would erupt this spring and Katla later in 2011. But volcanoes never like to follow rules!

  4. Maybe I am reading the THEY station wrong, but the inflation appears to only have been a spike with a deflation event returning the plumbing to previous level.

  5. Maybe a dumb question here: is the steaming at the crater somehow linked to the GPS anomalies?

    1. No, not at this stage anyway. The weather is a factor here. Currently it is cold in Iceland and the frost around Eyjafjallajökull is now around -5C.

  6. A few days ago, someone posted that the thought activity below Godabunga may belong to Eyjafjallajokull rather than Katla. Has any magma ever historically erupted at Godabunga? If so, has anyone ever sampled it or is it too deep in the galcier? If sampled, do we know if it is like that of Eyjafjallajokull or Katla?

    1. Good questions Treacleminer! The Nordic Volcanologic Center, located in Reykjavik, has linked several papers one of which is this:
      http://www2.norvol.hi.is/Apps/WebObjects/HI.woa/swdocument/1015721/Sturkell_etal_2009b.pdf

      In brief, Godabunga is the location of a magmatic intrusion originating with the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic system, one that has not erupted and the top of which sits just under a mile down. If you go back to Lurking’s plot of quakes 2005-2010, you’ll see it branching off from the main Eyjafjalla conduits back towards Katla and the most intense red area in between Eyjafjallajökull and Katla – compare that with fig 2.7 in the paper by Sturkell!

    2. AAAARGH!! I only put up one link – to the Sturkell 2010 paper on Norvol so that Treacleminer could get some answers to his excellent questions – and the comment-gobbler EATS it!

    3. To answer you quickly.
      Godabunga is considered a crypto-dome, ie. a volcano that has a chamber and magma, but that has never erupted. Think of it as a volcano-pregnancy.
      It is by some considered to be in the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic system. But… And that is a big but. There is only circumstantial evidence for this, mainly that it usually has quake swarms when Eyja has quake swarms, and that it is in trend with the Fimmvörduhalsi fissure eruption. Real evidence would be a chemical composition analyzis comparing magmas from Eyja, Katla and Godabunga. But that requires drilling into Godabunga for a sample untill it erupts.
      Well, Godabungas suspected magma reservoir would be at least 2 km under the glaciers intersection with the bedrock, so you need to drill deep.

      1. Well, overall Japan has the best infrastructure and civilian training in the world to deal with it. Yeah, they still have casualties on occasion, but no one is better prepared.

  10. I do think that the deep earthquakes signal the new intrusion of magma deep within Eyjafjallajökull volcano system. But this start-up appears to be slow so far.

    I do not believe that this are subsiding earthquake in Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

  11. I also got three mystery earthquakes on the Hekla station at 19:50 to 19:55 UTC. I do not know where they did come from. Might be short or close to the Hekla station.

    1. Whats the reason that they don’t show up in the IMO system? Are the soo weak, that they appear only on your geophone because its close enough to the quakes?

    2. This is because the events are weak and cannot be properly located. But this might also be frost related events (from when the ground freezes). But I doubt it, as event like that is normally weak and has a different signature then a earthquake.

  12. OT: Note for anyone using that flat file of all quakes in Iceland.

    There are holes in the dataset. I found a two month gap between Oct 06 2009 to Jan 2010, and there are about three other one week holes up around 9/29/02, 12/31/01, and 12/31/00. The data for the two month gap is available in the individual week files, and I think I’ll be able to get the missing data for the other holes the same way.

    Also be aware that if you pull the individual week files, that 2009 has 53 weeks. (The New Year was in the middle of the week)

    As for it being indicative of shoddy work, it’s not, I found the same issue with a Yellowstone dataset but I had to wait around for someone to find it… the raw week data just wasn’t there.

    This public service announcement was brought to you by AIR™, fulfilling all your respiratory needs for time immemorial

    BTW.. here is last night’s Lunar Eclipse as seen from Florida.

    http://i51.tinypic.com/302rqrc.png

    1. @Lurking: I was about to write a comment on the “fulfillment issue”, but I found it better (and wiser) just to say thank you very much. Especially for the eclipse shot. We couldn’t see it from Rio (although we had the clearest weather you can get in summertime). It just came too late to be visible.
      The moon looks rather purplish in the pic, don’t you think? Maybe due to volcanic ash…?

      1. Doubtful. This was way into the eclipse and if you notice, the background itself is not fully black. That’s light pollution.

        Add to that the little fact that a clear pristine day here can not go untainted by smoke from Cyprus fires. That’s one thing that I’ve noticed about NW Florida… and probably Florida in general, we have the nicest smelling woodland fires and controlled burns.

        Sort of halfway between Cedar and Pine in smell, with just a touch of Oak.

      4. Renato, sorry to say, but that Mediafire site sucks and is quite intrusive. I never got to see the pic at all because all the ads it kept pushing.

      5. All lunar eclipses is red due to the fact that this wavelength having an easier time with bending around earth than the shorter wavelengths like blue. So the red light hits the moon, and the others get stuck behind ol’ earth. Hope this made it a bit clearer.
        The thing with wavelengths is that the longer a wavelength is, the easier time of bending it has, that is why long-wave radio is better for transmitting over long distances compared to short-wave radio.

  13. @ Lurking

    unfortunately the only thing i saw from my home was a large bright halo, not a single view of the exlipse…

  14. I got a email from a expert that tells me that a volcano ash can interfere with the GPS signal. This is what appear to have happened in the last few days.

      2. Jón: Thank you for the link and for the tip that you unintentionally gave me. In my stupidity, I never knew that such details could be reached in the GVP site. That could have avoided many dumb questions on my part. Thank you. 🙂

      3. I also got a email about Austmannsbunga. There is some icing going on the antenna at that location. It is wise to keep in mind the error factors at play here.

      4. The inflation started during the summer, so no ice there. Maybe there is some ice during the last month or so.

      7. That data is from 22 nov. 2010 and last data points are white (likely errors).

      8. AUST was decomisioned for the winter due to the imposibility to maintanance it during the winter. It was substituted with RFEL and a few others for the winter.
        Sigrún has a small bunch of temporary stations up there due to high concern for the Austmannsbunga. I can’t find the article where she explains it. It was in Icelandic press.

      1. I don’t think it is a false alarm, given the deep earthquake that have started to appear again. But the GPS signal is distorted by ash and ice and there-for confusing the outcome that I relay on when making my estimates.

        I do think that a new inflation period is up on us. But it might be a lot shorter in its path then I did think.

      2. Thanks Jon for your watchful eye. Time is always the key ingredient as more data arrives that challenges paradigms and conclusions constrained by them.

      3. Lets see if this table of quakes for the last 3 days of the area comes out ok.

        Date & Tími Lengd/Lon Breidd/Lat Stærð/R Dýpi/depth Gerð/Type
        2010-12-22 00:34:22 -19.206 63.763 0.9 4.1 auto
        2010-12-21 22:35:07 -19.068 63.62 1.4 5.4 auto
        2010-12-21 09:06:16 -19.354 63.651 1.9 0.1 qu
        2010-12-21 06:07:07 -19.362 63.654 0.2 0.1 qu
        2010-12-20 10:17:38 -19.254 63.677 0.5 0.5 qu
        2010-12-20 09:26:11 -19.501 63.657 0.1 0.1 qu

        I think Eyjafjallajökull is settling, lesser load on top – sure there is some molten lava, but settling I think.

      5. The problem with this (and also the last) winter so far is, that it has pretty few snow. Not good for the glacier.

      6. I wish that was the thing here…
        0,9m (3 feet) of snow and minus 25C is starting to produce a local glacier of my roof.
        But still the load ontop would still not be falling due to winter times in Iceland? Or do you have that freakish american heatwave?

      7. @Carl: I had the “pleasure” to fly from Iceland to Europe on monday. I had only 4 hours of delay in the end, ways better than all the guys who tried to fly to London which all got their flights cancelled. Whats wrong these days about a bit of winter?

      9. You do know that there was a mix-up with the names of Greenland & Iceland 😉 ?

      10. And I who thought they where named after the green breachia in the settlers valley of Greenland and the Ice that fell into the mjöd (mead) of Ingólfur on the first evening after beating the shit out of the Papar Irish monks in Iceland… 😉

    2. That is one of our main news topics here in the UK. It is so very rare for us to get an earthquake that big! I bet that sounds daft to people in Iceland that it should be considered such important news here. There are no non extinct volcanos in UK though, so nothing else will happen.

  16. Ever since this inflation at Eyja, there is a consistent pattern of deeper EQ around and in Eyja with one north of Katla. All this following several weeks of high density EQs starting in RP leading into SIFZ.

  18. I have been recording a swarm of small earthquakes in the last 24 hours. Some of them are actually frost cracks in the ground. But most of this appears to be real earthquakes. I do not know where they are coming from. But it is close far as I can tell on the P and S wave.

    The largest earthquakes appear clearly on my webicorder (Hekla).

      1. The closest seismometer that IMO has is about 15km away from Hekla volcano. But there seismometer is only about ~3 km away from my geophone station. My geophone is located about 15 km away from the peak of Hekla volcano. So every minor earthquake that happens there appears clearly on my geophone.

        There closest to Hekla volcano station is named Haukadalur.

      2. Are the things being recorded for Haukadalur not really the same events recording stronger from further east? What does all the weird stuff on the Vatnsfell mean, of is it just instrument problems?

    1. What a beautiful scene. Here in Michigan the birds would be snoring in this lighting. I look at the Katla and Hekla web cams quite often. What are the other relevant Iceland volcano web cams? I don’t understand the locations that the abbreviations are for. But I DO understand the references to the Google translations now – terrible and funny.

      Happy holidays to everyone. You guys are so knowledgeable and that makes this such a great blog. Thanks again for sharing information!!

      1. That’s a plausible explanation. And they have been moving the cam’s location lately. Let’s wait and see.

    2. That wouldn’t really make sense since the webcam is located on Búrfell mountain, which is way out of Hekla volcanic zone. So my guess would be displacement of the camera ;D

  21. Also, don’t forget that there is the human element. Personally, I’d say that a curious hiker tapping the camera is a more likely explanation than earthly expansion or the wind shifting the position of the camera.

    1. …apparently you can’t link directly to the table tab! Just click the “table” tab to see the negative magnitudes, which presumably don’t show up on the “map” tab graph as they are off the bottom of the scale?

  23. The magnitude is based off of a logarithm. When you get into small and ultra-small events, that negative value actually indicates values where the exponent is lower than zero. The reported magnitude is based off of that exponent value.

    Example;

    200 = 2 x 10^2
    20 = 2 x 10^1

    and a negative exponent gives you this

    .2 = 2 x 10^-1

    And if you think that’s weird. These aren’t the only magnitude scaled that are used. mb, Ms, ML, Mw, Mo, Me are a few of the others… each having different characteristics and usages… and different valid ranges. That means they drift high or low on either end of the scale. Some are better at deep events, others are dependent on local rock structure. (sheer modulus etc…)

    I’ve been beating my head against a wall for several days to try and come up with a consistent conversion to moment magnitude. (Mo). Everything I have tried (multiple references) puts me either high or low of the SIL data.

    Wile rummaging around, I did run across this reference to dealing with the conversions in the Balkans:

    Local Relations For Converting ML TO MW In Southern-Western Balkin Region
    LL. Duni1, Sh. Kuka, N. Kuka

    http://www.wbseismicmaps.org/DocumentsACTA_2010_Magnitude_unification_Revised.pdf

    In there, they make the statement:

    “Data completeness levels are estimated from the earthquake catalogue, by using the cumulative number of events versus time graphs, in order to evidence slope changes, assuming that the most recent change in slope occurs when the data became complete for magnitudes above the reference (Gasperini and Ferrari, 2000).”

    And they put up a nice set of graphs illustrating the point going back to the 1400’s. I realized that those slope changes were actually indicating the technology skew that I’m always yammering about in the historical record.

    So I did a plot of the cumulative events in the Icelandic catalog for all events above ML 1, compared to all events ML 0 and above, compared to all events not ML -9.99 (error data or unconverted data with only an M listed).

    In the plot you can see notable dates when the technology of Iceland’s sensor network changed. A few times, the upgrades are close to volcanic eruption dates as new equipment is put in place.

    http://i54.tinypic.com/wj6p7o.png

    Generally, quakes in Iceland above ML 1 accumulate at about 14.18 per day. When you see changes in the linear slope of the line that is a good indicator that the reporting has changed. Curves would indicate swarms or other seismic events of note. Changes in the ratio of small events to large events (well, larger than ML 1) are probably indicative of the deployment of more sensitive equipment.

    But that’s just my interpretation.

    1. Sitting here looking at my post… I came up with the question of “so?”

      Why would an idea of “technology skew” be of any interest… other than as a fan of seismic sensors and an avid fetish of squiggly lines?

      Simple.

      If you do a long term look at seismically, and try to compare the present with the past, it is very easy to make the wrong conclusion about what you are seeing. Say for instance that you notice that there are 10% more quakes this year than ten years ago. You might think that something large scale is changing.. and jump to the wrong conclusion. The actual fact was that the sensors have improved and your seeing more stuff than was possible in the past.

      Being aware if the “technology skew” is important as a sanity check.

      1. Thanks again. In other words, we ‘re just planting for the future so we know exactly what we’ll be talking about earthquakewise.

      2. Many thanks for your input Lurking, you can make this data sound interesting and help us to visualize what is going on underneath.
        I asked Einar Kjartanson in Veðurstofan, how the deep factor in seismic event calculations was calculated, and he answered that there is no correction for sea level and the level of the seismic sensors close to the event has biggest influence of the deep factor.
        This has probably most effect on area around Grímsfjall where the seismic sensor are very high upp.

      3. @Renato Rio,

        Pretty much. I ran into the same issue when I was farting around with the Moon-Earth-Sun to quake relationship. (its real, its there, but there isn’t much you can do with it other than to say that worldwide… quakes tend to increase a bit. NOTHING more specific than that.) The issue I had was the dwell time that the Moon had at the different phase relationships due to the speed in it’s orbit. Rather than fight the math, I found relatively simple way of correcting for it and the apparent relationship (the one the loons jump up and down about) stayed intact. So there is some merit to it, but that’s about it.

        I just did a run on the USGS Worldwide catalog (M4.5+) and found similar “technology skew” finger prints.

        From 1973 to 1984 the detection rate was about 9.37 quakes per Day. 1984 to 2005, 12.09 quakes per day. 2005 onward, 18.56 quakes per day. These are all linear fits to the different segments of the curve for the actual counts. In each segment, there is a 99.9 correlation coefficient for that area.

        This doesn’t bode well for those who state that our quake situation is getting worse as 2012 approaches. (and present graphs) It seems that over time we’ve gotten better at detecting and reporting them. Easily 53.5% better just from pre 2005 to post 2005.

        @Dagur Bragason

        So.. the reported depth is below the surface?

        That’s gonna be a tough one to crack… doable, but not necessarily worth the trouble from a hobby point of view. I may just have to caveat the plots with that tidbit of info.

        Thanks.

    2. The names of the authors of that paper… In swedish it is… odd….
      Toilett-paper and Male-organ-usage… (I tried to clean it up…) Hm… Nah it would really be Cleenex and Penising that wrote the paper.

      1. Roflol!!

        I don’t feel so bad about my last name being a derogatory comment in Hawaiian now.

      2. I have always wished that my last name was a deadly insult in some obscure language. Once I even contemplated changing it into Rautakyrpää, but that was not a small enough language, and not insulting enough. I think I will go with the latin word Fututor perhaps… 🙂

      3. With all due respect to Kultsi, Jack and Finnish lurkers, try saying “I love you” in Finnish.

      5. Take a step backwards with ‘rauta’ to ‘hraut’ and then forward again to ‘puna’ (red) and you’ll get Punakyrpä, which is surely shocking enough… 😀

      6. Or, take “killing” and “fan” together to “killingsfan” which will definitely give you their attention…

  25. Between yesterday and today there has been much more earthquakes around Eyjafjallajokull mountain and in Godabunga area, even some earthquakes in Katla central caldera, north of it, and also in Tindfjalljokull. Most are about 5km, some are 10Km.

    People, before an eruption, what is the general pattern of earthquakes concerning their depth? For example, an earthquake swarm 10km, another 5km, another 2km, how near an eruption does these cases point? Approximately of course.

    1. Well, as I see stated every time. “Each volcano is different”

      I don’t know what Eyjafjallajökull did on it’s run-up phase, but when it went, the collection of quakes halfway between the main vent and Fimmvörðuháls shot across to the main vent and then it popped the cork. As it progressed, it developed a well defined spike down to the mantle… that is, as far as the quakes were concerned.

      A recent plot of Hekla’s quake set prior to it’s last eruption seemed to point at an area southwest of the volcano that had a group of quakes down around 7.5km and deeper. Then the area of quakes took off to the west, decreasing in depth and turning north and to the volcano. At least that’s what the plot looked like. All this happened at about the same time and from initiation to the last quake of that batch was about 2.5 hours.

      Jón Frímann can likely give you a better answer, he’s been watching this stuff far longer than I have.

  26. Is it just me or has the number of afterquakes in Bonin been a bit many. They just had a 6,5 quake. Odd thing is that they do not seem to be falling in strength. They have mostly been around fives, but all of a sudden it started pick up in strength again.

    1. The last plot I did had them increasing in strength to the west of the initial shock. Lot of surface stuff (relative to the main shock).

      I’ll redo the plot of it later after I get finished digesting this data-set I’m working on. (redoing my Earth-Sun-Moon stuff)

      Note… I might go off and do some FPS stuff first. We weren’t able to take the TV station last night, though I did scare the @#$ out of an Apache pilot. (a SRAW to the cockpit will do that).

      1. Looking forward to the plot.
        Hadn’t you given up on the sun-moon-quake stuff?

        Do a neutral burnwith parabola, pull yours and your neighbours microwave-ovens apart and mount the microwave-heads in the parabola, point it in the correct direction, turn on… If you have enough heads and juice ’em up a bit you have your “star wars” EMWP-gun. That would scare ’em good 🙂 At least their com-system would be da gonner. But probably at short range even the hardened electronics would be fritzed.
        And then they say that weapons tech is advanced. One dude built a heavier version of this with standard electronics and popped a com-sat, blaiming ungodly tv-shows, on a budget of a 1000 bucks. The military sells the same thing for 1 million bucks or more. Go figure.

  27. @Carl le Strange on müsli

    “Hadn’t you given up on the sun-moon-quake stuff?”

    No, not really. There is definitely something there, I can see it in the data. In no way do I think there is much use in it other that knowing about it. Nothing like the moon-bats that bring it up from time to time. Matter of fact, I was kicking myself in the arse for never having dumped it all into MySql so that I use it as a bludgeon for the last one I encountered.

    But now… I can get the whole think in a single spreadsheet. :D.

    A few weeks ago, one sidestepped the issue about moon-phase and the looming catastrophe in Iceland (not) by yammering about lunar declination. I had no data to directly refute that statement. Now I do…

    Magnitude of all USGS listed quakes > Mag 4.5 vs Lunar declination.

    http://i54.tinypic.com/2qnnr6d.png

    {snicker} That one was a monster to redo. You’ll note a slight uptick in magnitude around 18° declination (+ and -) but I think it’s an artifact of how much time the Moon spends there in relation to the other portions of it’s orbit… plus it passes there on both the upward and downward trek.

    But.. enough about that. More of a personal accomplishment than anything else.

    Bonin:

    As noted, the Bonin quakes have an interesting magnitude distribution. For the most part, excepting the main shock and this last large aftershock, they trend stronger to the west-northwest. No, I don’t know why. But here is the plot.

    http://i56.tinypic.com/2vtp6cm.png

    Ref: weaponry…

    Having a pretty strong background in Electronic Warfare, I fully understand and agree with your musing. Being retired… I had even toyed around with the idea of dumping a fairly well charged cap bank through a gauss coil out by the mail-box when a super base thump-thump vehicle motors by at 3 in the morning.

    Hey… I’m allowed to daydream.

    😀

    1. I am still scratching my head, but it was a beautifull graph to scratch the noggin’ to.

      If I remember my american legal system enough I would stay away from weaponizing the mail-box to destroy military equipment 🙂 If I remember the US Postal Code correctly the penalty on making weapons out of mail boxes is capital punishment. (Case of bad stomach, not being able to dump without reading, and dating a federal prosecutor.)

    2. Lurking, look up Michel Gauquelin and make certain that you compute for maximum gravitational influence of all heavenly bodies, then be prepared for the certainty that IF you find statistical anomalies you yourself will be regarded as one. 😉

      1. All of this moon talk is going to make Nadjiwoon swoon but methinks that they actually miss him. So they’re trying to lure him back in here with this lunar lunacy. Btw, isn’t one of the HAARP bases in Norway?

      2. Hey, I am a strong believer in the work of Nostrodamus.

        Without his unnerving persistence in visiting plague areas, several dozen more would likely have died.

        But I have been looking at that odd correlation in those ≈28 day cycles. It seems that my wife gets irritable at about the same part of the lunar phase… but I just can’t put my finger on it…

      3. Well, it could be that your wife’s hormonal cycles are in synch with the lunar cycles (mine are). Wasn’t there some kind of scientific study that proved most women menstruate close to the full moon? I vaguely remember it from the 80’s.

        Re: Nostradamus: Some of his predictions were spot on and if the others hadn’t burned so many cats along with witches, the plague wouldn’t have been quite so bad. Cats kill rodents, rats were the main carriers of the plague. Astrology is interesting but it’s hardly an exact science and the best astrologers are actually “psychic”. The first astrologers worked with a 7 planet system (the last 2 hadn’t been discovered yet) so anything that was predicted with astrology (way back then) is quite miraculous.

      4. Oh, I think I get it!!!!
        Women cause pestilence and what we used to think were natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis… but the fact that they are time aligned with 28 day cycles which are alligned with the moon, points the finger of guilt to women causing them???????? Anyone for burning witches here????

      5. Sigrún: “Cats kill rodents”

        And yet they still survive long enough to mess up our lives with legislation…

        —-

        You know that’s actually a pretty good point. This was about the time of the great self destruction, and taking out the familiar along with the perpetrator would have made sense.

        Not to mention all those “pig in a poke” transactions that were taking place.

        —

        Alright, now the real reason that I still play with Sun-Earth-Moon stuff.

        Having the actual bona fide data allows me to respond to the “oh yeah, prove it” aspect of those arguments. Plopping one of those graphs down and pointing at the source data with a hearty (and congenial ) “There” gives me a nice warm feeling of gratification. Even if a counter argument is presented… the data is the data. “now wiggle”

        😀

      6. Jakie says: ” Anyone for burning witches here?”

        Actually, I prefer mine slightly toasted with a bit of butter and marmalade….

        —

        I do think that the meme of “witch”… the stereotype with the funky hat, has been around quite a long time. I remember a photo in an article about an archaeological dig located about half way to China that showed a remarkably preserved grave. The clothing was intact and the main focus was how these tartan wearing Caucasoids got so far East so early in time. (3000 – 5000 ybp or so? Can’t remember exactly)

        Anyway, there in the grave… one of those wide brimmed pointy topped “witch’s” hats.

      7. Actually I think the witches are best served decked out in christmas laungerie and a big dollop of butter ontop. Most witches in real life have a tendency to be cute… Even if they are working ever so hard to not be 😉

    1. I was gonna drink it at Thanksgiving (Nov) but got tangled up frying multiple turkeys and not verbally assaulting miscreant relatives. Figured it was best to stay unimpaired for both endeavors and mead/beer/whiskey/tequila tend to prompt me to speak my mind.

      On a plus side, I now have about pint of Maple Whiskey available. (Aged in charred maple rather than Oak, but it’s only got three months on it.) If I can arrange things where I don’t have to travel I’m gonna have a blast.

      1. I just finished a batch of homegrown Tequila Rose to put the relatives to sleep during the hollidays. Just cooking rose petals with strawberries and suger into mush, than pouring 95%ethanol ontop to soak it for a few days, filter and pour fresh high fat cream onto it untill one is down to 40-ish percent and peace will come on christmas. (If that doesn’t work I still have jug of 95 to knock them out…)
        Me and my brother will hide away with the good stuff in the basement of course, have a small cask of whiskey down there from a defunct still in Scotland that went belly-up during the WWII.

        Bring on the relatives 🙂

  29. I am going to write a short blog post early tomorrow about the activity that is currently going on. I was planning to do so today. But I did go to a friends place to fix his computer and all that stuff that follows that.

    There has been a lot of freeze cracks going to (“freeze earthquakes”) in the last 24 hours due to the cold weather in Iceland. This has been confusing the automatic SIL system according to Icelandic Met Office. But I did call them yesterday (22nd of December 2010).

    But for most part, it is quiet in Iceland earthquake wise. Besides the deep earthquakes that have started to re-appear under Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

    1. Yeah… I’ve seen it. But the data is… pretty error prone. Not that there is a problem with the data itself, it’s presentation has a few out of sequence items and that makes me question it’s accuracy.

      There is also that issue of “technology skew.”

      I had to delay getting to this one since it uses days prior to what Excel can natively deal with. Even though this is a newer version and has better capability than the older one, I still had to resort to using the xdate add-in. Correcting the sequencing in the table and applying that “skew detection” method you get this graph:

      http://i52.tinypic.com/eg1nuo.png

      Doing a histogram of the whole data set, and one with events closer than seven days filtered out (do get rid of swarms) gives you the numbers in the upper left corners.

  31. @Lurking @Carl: You guys go to fast! I can’t cope with it all. Can’t tell irony from consistent scientific reasoning. For a moment it all sounded to me as a sudden outburst of “follie à deux” which could thrust you guys into the arms of the FBI folks. Is that kind of talking suitable for a Christmas carols’ night? Or are you guys into a secret HAARP device manufacturing conspiracy?
    For me, it sounds like the most amusing piece of music, I must say, and all the amusement I get from it makes me laugh and say: you guys rock! (even if I can’t follow much of it).
    Sleep tight!

    1. Well, for me it’s part of how I grew up. I did 20 years in Electronic Warfare before they retired the specialty and rolled it back up into the Crypto community. (Which is fine my me, they need to have that really messed up Sea/Shore rotation back.) Being prior military, I enjoy first person shooters. But not being a teenie bopper, I don’t have the twitch game that they do. So.. I do what make sense, hide and lay traps. I really enjoy catching the other guy’s helo in a compromising position. They are usually are quite cocky in their game play and take great offense when you drop them with something as simple as a .50 cal on a Humvee that they weren’t paying attention to… next to a bush. behind a wall…. lurking, waiting.

      As for the other stuff, as long as you don’t violate the cardinal rule of the FCC, intentionally causing disruption to a radio service, your sort of in the clear. Though I think that gauss coil frying a car stereo is a bit out of their realm… it is electronic and they might stretch the rules to nab you. Besides, I said “next to the mailbox” not on or in the mail box. So that leaves out the USPS as long as the letter carrier isn’t wearing a lot of metal…

      Now… if you want to consider the technical aspects of it. A rather large capacitor bank would be needed. And it would have to be able to handle a sizable voltage. I’m thinking “Z machine.” It’s essentially a voltage multiplier using a capacitor banks cross connected with spark gaps. Once you reach the breakdown voltage of the spark gaps, the whole load gets dumped into the target. Sandia National Laboratory uses a grown up version to generate high power X-rays. But the concept and basic circuit design is quite simple.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_machine

      But… you do come back to the original problem… spark gaps generate copious amounts of radio frequency energy… which puts you right back into that FCC problem.

      So… it’s better to plot quakes and learn statistics. It’s not that far from gathering and analyzing information… and it keeps you from inadvertently frying someone or going to jail.

      BTW… there are other things you can do with high power electric discharges. Such as shrinking coins.

      http://www.capturedlightning.com/frames/interesting1.html

      2. Well, a National Sunday newspaper once (1990 ish) accused me of manufacturing plutonium in my garage, but the story was quickly discredited and they they paid me libel compensation. It was a bit funny though and the other press enjoyed printing how silly the original claim had been.

        It was a good story reading:-

        “What is the difference between Secret nuclear installations of Colonel Gaddaffi in Libyia, weapons plants of Saddam Hussein and the garage of” ……….(mine)….. Their answer was that the “only difference was that the US government was not bombing my garage!”

        I guess it was win-win. They got more for the story than they paid in libel compensation.

      4. A friend of mine built a shortwave threadless set for his guitar, and sat down an played for hours. Then it knocked on the door, and when he opened he was promptly arrested.
        He lived under a slave-master antenna for the region so all the listeners for a certain radio-channel got guitarpractice for five hours…

  32. Jón, what’s happening on your Heklubyggð geophone? Storm?

    PS. Jack, I can only speak for Swedes and some of the English, but “minä rakkasten sinua” sounds more like the kind of curse a Finnish warlock would cast on his enemies – “I cast you on the Flame Eternal” – than a term of endearment. 😉

    2. Well, “hö-ös förtjusande mö” does sound less flowing than “heinäsaaren ihana neito” for “hay island’s enticing maiden”…

      1. And the world record of teaching the least usefull phrase in 2 simultaneously small languages goes to Kultsi!

        I really feel that I need to find an islander female farmer so I can say that to her in finnish.
        But, since I am more planning to go to Iceland to find a beautifull icelandic volcanologist (I am firmly convinced there is one under pretty much every stone there) I would probably need to know that usefull phrase in Icelandic 🙂

        LoL@Kultsi

    1. Actually sending someone back into an age where the amoebas was dominant lifeform would probably be an effective weapon, haven’t thought about it before. Do you want me to name the weapon after you?
      *innocent blue eyes look*

      1. “Do you want me to name the weapon after you?”

        Oh, sweet Carl. Sometimes I wonder if your bite worse than your bark. However, I do hope that your holiday season is as lovely as a bed of fermented rose petals.

        Moving right along, I dedicate this song to all of the “mad” scientists reading this blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=347M0hcgjcw

    1. You just gave me an idea. Iceland should sell auction off the volcanoes (one by one) and set up a disaster relief fund.

  36. Looking at the EQ´s at IMO website the quakes are all over the place. Not like before when it was around a few stations.

    Now its everywhere…Why is that? Jon do you have an explanation for it?

    1. I am unsure why that is. Some earthquakes are poorly located by the automatic. But I am not sure why the earthquakes have this pattern as it appears at the moment.

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