Since yesterday (26-March-2015) a minor earthquake swarm has been taking place in Hekla volcano. This has not been continuous earthquake swarm and there has not been huge number of earthquakes taking place. Largest earthquake had the magnitude of 1,4.
The earthquake activity in Hekla volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.
This earthquake activity took place deep inside Hekla volcano, with the deepest earthquake being on 17 km depth (mag 1,4). Other earthquakes took place on shallower depths, but all depths where greater then 10 km. What exactly is happening I do not know, at this depth it is possible the earthquake activity taking place is due to magma movement rather then tectonic changes. I don’t expect any eruption to take place in Hekla volcano at current time.
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Interesting Jon. You know I’ve been monitoring waveform uncorrected borehole strain for a month now, last time this happened was a non event, but any eqs at all in Hekla are of concern given its history of activity without warning.
Throughout the holuhraun event, large eqs in bb were reflected in burfell data chart, so whilst this area is only just off the bb system it may still have been affected by recent events.
Burfell being the closest station, is still showing this http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/strain/1sec/index.html
And yes, I am a Hekla nut.
I thought you might have been a Öræfajökull nut. This has been popping up every 400 years. A rhyolite timebomb slowly filling up. These next couple of years in Iceland could bring experts and non experts reading blogs like these for a long time with this rifting episode. I personally find it strange very little has been felt in the area between Katla and Grimsvotn.
We’re all volcano nuts or we wouldn’t be in here 😉
Very roughly, and this is terrible statistics, we should expect that Oraefajokull should have an eruption some 400 years later, and this is circa 2100, thus we should see a gradual build-up of activity there. But consider this wild speculation, based on extremely little data.
This article says Hekla has been ready to erupt for four years now. So it´s only a matter of time.
I suppose you can find a way to translate this.
http://www.dv.is/frettir/2015/3/27/eldfjallafraedingur-hekla-verid-tilbuin-ad-gjosa-i-fjogur-ar/
http://en.vedur.is/weather/observations/webcams/surtsey/
Is this erupting? And what is the history behind this volcano?
No. This are the town lights in Vestmanneyjar Island. There is no eruption in this part of Iceland at the moment. Last eruption in this area ended in 1973.