Posted on by Jón Frímann

A new deep earthquake in Esjufjöll volcano

A new deep earthquake did just happen earlier tonight. The SIL system at IMO did give the earthquake the size ML1.7 with the depth of 22,5 km. In my experience this normally means that a earthquake swarm is about to start in Esjufjöll volcano. But this is not always the case, so we just have to wait and see what happens. But since earthquakes did start in Esjufjöll volcano last autumn (2010) with a earthquake swarm of about 70 earthquakes.

The activity has continues since then. But the earthquakes have completely stopped in-between earthquake swarms. This behaviour appears to be not uncommon in volcanoes in Iceland and elsewhere around the world. The earthquake yesterday in Esjufjöll volcano was size ML1.9 with the depth of 5.4 km. It is clear that a magma is creating this earthquakes, but there are few tectonics earthquakes in this area (but they do happen).

23 Replies to “A new deep earthquake in Esjufjöll volcano”

  1. What’s about Hekla ? It is’nt sunrise now ! What’s on the left side of the pikture ?

    1. That camera is extremely light sensitive. So you are seeing the daylight from the other side of the planet. Even if it is actually still dark outside in Iceland.

    2. Since about 7:50 GMT a bright light is getting bigger. It started with a bright light at approximately 5 mm.

      2. And that camera faces south-east, when the sun is low on the horizon we get long period of dawn (if the sky is clear).

  3. New GPS-data from Grimsvötn, is it correct? The deflation seems rather unnatural, could this be caused by ice on the antenna, or the recent storm?

      1. Yeah I was wondering already hehe. 🙂
        By the way, how does ice actually affect the GPS-data? It’s not like the whole station is lifted I guess.

      2. GPS signal travels slower in ice than in air. Hence, the receiver can not make any difference between a real movement and ice in the direction of movement. The effect can even be calculated pretty easily.

  4. There was a very strong wind yesterday, and very cold. Lots of ice formed here in SW Iceland, so probably there as well.

  5. Wednesday
    05.01.2011 19:41:43 63.634 -19.348 6.1 km 3.3 90.01 4.9 km W of Goðabunga

    1. This quake has obviously been reviewed in the mean time. Its now displayed as a 2.6 in 1.1km depth. No idea what this means.

    2. The automatic SIL system that Icelandic Met Office has downgraded the size of the earthquake. This earthquake was a low period earthquake. There are also new SIL stations around Mýrdalsjökull and Eyjafjallajökull and that means that a more earthquakes are recorded and the size that they can detect goes down to ML0.0 or lower.

      2. This is a earthquake that has it’s main frequancy at 1Hz. It is also a long period in that sense it has a longer trace then a normal earthquake.

    1. At 23:20 wind from northnortheast 6 Meters pr. second, temp. -1°C at Markarfljót.

      Could be something interesting

    2. There is a northern storm starting in Iceland. It is expect to last for the next two to three days. This storm is going to bring a lot of cold weather and snow.

Comments are closed.