Posted on by Jón Frímann

Bárðarbunga daily update on 29-September-2014

I am sorry for this late update. I did spend several hours trying to figure out a problem that does not appear to be on my end regarding my IPv6 tunnel connection. I hope this problem is solved by my tunnel provider (Hurricane Electric) soon. Now back to Bárðarbunga volcano.

Overview of the activity of 29-September-2014

  • Largest earthquake today had the magnitude of 5,5 and the depth of 5,6 km. Second largest earthquake had the magnitude of 4,9 and depth of 3,1 km. Other earthquakes where smaller. The largest earthquake was felt in Akureyri and surrounding area.
  • Due to bad weather it was close to impossible to make any observations about the eruption according to the news. Scientists where unable to go to there area today far as I know.
  • The eruption in Holuhraun continues as it has been doing for almost a month now.
  • 29-September-2014 means there is now one month since the first eruption in Holuhraun started and finished within few hours. The first eruption started and ended on 29-August-2014 and it erupted in craters that had last erupted in the year 1797.
  • Due to bad weather fewer earthquakes where recorded. Only earthquakes that did go above the wind noise where seen on the SIL network and my geophones.
  • The lava-field in Holuhraun is now larger than 44 square kilometres in size.
  • Bárðarbunga caldera continues to drop at same rate since that process started on 16-August-2014.
  • Nothing else to report far as I know

Images of the eruption

Here are few images of the eruption. Due to copyright I only link to them from this website.

Gengu á rauðglóandi hrauni í tæpa viku (People walking on red glowing lava for a week) – Vísir.is (Icelandic)

Winter arrives at Holuhraun (Rúv.is)

There are many pictures of the eruption on University of Iceland Twitter feed.

192 Replies to “Bárðarbunga daily update on 29-September-2014”

  2. What’s happening with the caldera GPS. I’ve seen many “fake drop”s that disappear when the median measurement is completed, but never that big and that long. Especially because the osciallations of the instantaneous data (grey curve on the GPS plot) are not very large presently (next storm isn’t there yet).

      1. Strangely the drumplots don’t show any associated small EQs or tremor, though… “it” would probably shake everything around. Unless the ice (which under 100s of meters behave like very viscous fluid and doesn’t break like solid) can absorb it and make it smooth…

      2. Lets wait and see. It does seem a little different than other drops, but we won’t know for sure for at least a couple hours or so. Very interesting though!

    2. Salvage operation with 2 vehicles under way now.
      Undoubtedly area is expected to go up in near future.

  5. still going down… incredible. and what is the quickly moving light in front of the webcam? A car?

      1. The first car stopped away from R2D2 – almost like they were looking over/down to glowing lava by river – but who knows?
        Quite unexpected – but maybe in dark and conditions at moment better to have 2 cars travel together?

    1. They must have the most spectacular view of that lava from there – hope they take some photos and post them online 🙂

  11. I have read at RUV today that the scientists would fly over the scene at End of the week. As there is a storm coming, it will be good that they look at the lavaflow from the hill. I think they don’t know where the lava goes at this eastern side because there is no way for cars…

  13. btw: Cam 2 is pointing now to the end of the lava flow, but picture quality is poor, absolutely no additional information to cam 1

  14. Big drop on GPS could be the instrument blowing over. Don’t know how it didn’t yesterday.

    1. If that did happen how high off the ground is the GPS antenna when in the ‘standing’ position? (perhaps someone much better than i could work out if it has from the height difference ‘standing’ to on it’s side [large caldera drop]).

    2. No, it doesn’t take 2hours for a tripod to fall over

      It is the caldera going down and up as a big basedrum

      But for sure the master is thinking about changing habits again, just to be sure we don’t get bored and stop following the show

  15. well it seems now it was just another “fake drop”, just bigger and longer than most of the previous ones.

    1. We have to allow that last section of line a chance to smooth out… typically a few hours, at least, before we can determine any ressemblance of accuracry

      1. Yup, but in a few hours the eruption could be over, so we have to watch it just the same.

        I see from the long term graph it’s the second big hiccup like that — a drop with a nearly full rebound. I wonder if there’s a physical cause, or if it’s just an instrument artifact. Can volcanoes suffer contractions?

        Here’s a question, probably posed many times already: If the fissure eruption now has its own deep source, why is the caldera still subsiding?

  16. The fountains and the lava hitting the river are really putting on a show tonight. More lava is flowing than last night for sure.

  18. R2 seems to have stopped blinking, unless that happened a while ago. I assume because they’re servicing/refueling it. I still see the headlights of two cars.

  23. At 5.10-ish pm UK time, Mila 1 had a very clear view as the weather was good with great visibility and I could clearly see a plum coming from afar nothing as close as where the lava was, almost in the middle, slightly on the right of R2D2. With the rise of the level of the river, I am inclined towards Barry eruption, time will tell.

  24. @Den

    Yes the floating “live” youtube links work but had to delete the YouTube app to make it work

    Honestly, I get discouraged by the low resolution webcam scrunched into a quarter of the screen real estate. There is no joy in it 🙁

  25. Someone just cleaned mila 1 cam 🙂
    and r2d2 is gone. what happend? Someone knows this?

  26. NOT SURE where to try and post a comment . . .

    Jon hasn’t updated today–13th yet–is he OK? Sure hope so.

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