Posted on by Jón Frímann

Bárðarbunga volcano daily update for 8-October-2014

This is daily update for Bárðarbunga volcano for 8-October-2014. Please note that I am doing to do the updates a bit shorter when nothing special is happening.

Current status in Bárðarbunga volcano

  • Largest earthquake today had the magnitude of 5,2. This earthquake took place NNE part of the caldera where majority of the large earthquakes have been happening for the past weeks. This activity might be because a dyke is drilling its way trough the crust in that one spot. This is just an idea (based on the clues that I get from the earthquake activity) and is so far not yet proven in any form.
  • No major changes have been reported in the eruption in Holuhraun. The lava field is now larger then 52 square kilometres in size. The eruption is about the same size as it was when it started five weeks ago.
  • Bad weather is preventing proper observation of the eruption at times.
  • The highest crater called Baugur is now some 100 meters tall. The crater called Suðri is around 40 to 50 meters tall. Other craters in the eruption are smaller. Icelandic news with picture with the name of craters can be found here.
  • There has been almost no earthquake activity detected today under the dyke today.
  • No other news to report today that I know of.

I am going to post update here if anything new happens. Volcanoes are unpredictable forces of nature so anything can happen without warning when they erupt.

55 Replies to “Bárðarbunga volcano daily update for 8-October-2014”

    1. Those apparent sudden drops almost always get smoothed out after a few minutes. Looks to be the case this time too.

      Note too, per volcanologist Dave McGarvie’s twitter feed today and discussed here in the last post’s comments, there can be several days delay between an event that causes a change in subsidence and its detection via GPS, as the events have to propagate through a lot of rock and ice. So any one drop might not correlate at all with anything apparent like a recent earthquake — although I’m sure we can all agree quite often the larger quakes do get followed by sizeable drops — but not always.

  2. The SEarn Paciific Rise is taking a shaking to tonight! A 7.1 EQ @ Easter Island & earliee a 6.2 EQ in Mexico. They are bigger tonight. Be safr @ Bardabunga & other homelands or points of interest! Mr. Sandman is calling my name! ( Jamming 2 Metallica, 1991 Russian version Live )

    1. M 4.8 – 110km WNW of Hofn, Iceland

      Yep!
      Time
      2014-10-08 18:37:21 UTC-10:00
      Location
      64.576°N 17.381°W
      Depth
      9.3km

      2. Here it is!

        F-E Region: Iceland
        Time: 2014-10-09 04:37:23.2 UTC
        Magnitude: 5.0
        Epicenter: 17.06°W 64.79°N
        Depth: 10 km

  4. We are seeing a greater number of quakes and larger quakes at less than 1km depth.

  6. one question:
    – As for the height difference between Baugur and Bárðarbunga.
    – The fact that the lava source Bárðarbunga and 40 km away from the Baugur the lava comes out. how much force is needed in order to be able to. What would have been the inpact as it had come. Directly from the caldera maybe 500 meters high? or higher?

  7. Looks like freezing fog. That will build up ice on the GPS antenna and result in instability of the readings if past experience is any guide.

  8. According to me, Iceland is the current situation of danger so far rolled off.
    And if there should still be done something with Bárðarbunga itself then there unnoticed lost a lot of strength to Baugur. So that the Inpact will be less

  9. Three strong earthquakes (4.6, 5, 5.5) occurred in last two days in just 0.1 km depth, could it mean something bigger is happening right now in the caldera?

    1. Jon could you please comment on this if you have any ideas. I was going to post a similar comment about the very shallow EQ’s a few minutes ago. Very curious!

  10. The sun was strangely reddish when coming up this morning here is Reykjavik. Never seen a color like this before. Apparently the SO2 cloud is not far away when looking east.

      2. The pics you have posted are very unusual. A blood sunset, how beautiful, but a little strange at the same time.

  11. its look on the sat-pictures yesterday (see picture from post above), there is a very big steamcloud(plume) far east from the eruption .
    this could not be a new eruption, it is the place where the lava cross the river.

    1. Thanks for sharing this picture.
      You can see also a small yellow line of the so2-cloud on this webcam at this moment (not streaming):
      http://www.earthcam.com/cams/iceland/reykjavik/?cam=imagine

      Tonight Yoko Ono put on the light of his imagine peace tower. Sometimes you can see polar lights there.

      OT: The former Mayor of Reykjavík Jón Gnarr is among five recipients of this year’s Lennon-Ono Grant For Peace awards:
      http://icelandreview.com/news/2014/10/09/yoko-ono-awards-jon-gnarr-grant-peace-award

    3. …and if they have a picture a little more east of this, we could see the caldera of BB… 🙂

      2. Must be. Because there are no clouds visible and the area has been overcast for days.

  17. Whats up with Herðubreið swarm? Askja fissure swarm active again? It has been quiet for some time, there is something happening again. Also look for widespread quakes all over the Northern Iceland. Plates moved and pushed fresh magma into Askja system?

    1. Its close to an volcano called Herðubreiðarfjöll (no GVP information). I just think this is tectonic activity and nothing to worry about at the moment.

      1. Tectonic reaction to the stress of Holuhraun rift?
        Or no reaction to that, but normal action as now and then?

  18. Anything to with whats happening in Iceland ?

    Magnitude M 5.5
    Region SCOTLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
    Date time 2014-10-09 19:15:21.2 UTC
    Location 56.70 N ; 6.39 W
    Depth 120 km

    1. I saw that too – and have been googling – cant find a thing on it anywhere. It may be on the Atlantic fracture zone – which runs thru Bardy
      There will be stuff on the net tomorrow – it’d startle Scots – quakes are rare there.

    1. This one happened 3 minutes before the Scotland one.

      Magnitude M 4.1
      Region ICELAND
      Date time 2014-10-09 19:13:21.0 UTC
      Location 64.43 N ; 18.12 W
      Depth 40 km

      1. Sorry meant to say it happened exactly 2 minutes before the Scotland one.

        Is it coincidence they both happened at 19:13:21 and 19:15:21 ?

  20. @ wial
    I had not heard of the
    Metallica Antartica Concert. Thanks for sharing! The clear plastic dome they had would be awesome to observe Bardabunga in & we would not have to worry about building a campfire that’s for sure!

  21. It has been stated on the internet that Öraefajökull volcanomin Iceland is the nearest to the position of the Scotland earthquake.

  24. Is there more than one magma chamber under Bardarbunga(4 pancakes according to VC lol) or is it one very large complex chamber,currently being fed by a rifting event?

    1. Just throw an idea out there,upper part of chamber is evolved magma undergoing temperature phase change,melting caldera roof causing centralized block slippage and cryptodome formation to the NE.Lower part chamber basalt ,feeding Holuhraun fissure .Major rifting event feeding into lower part of chamber?All this massive heating is driving earthquake activity in the chamber /rock boundary?

  25. Thursday
    09.10.2014 21:22:11 64.675 -17.423 7.1 km 5.2 99.0 6.3 km NE of Bárðarbunga

  27. 0.1km depth is reserved by IMO for quakes whose depth could not be located properly ( therefore this marks uncertain data points rather than actual depth).

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