At the moment everything is quiet in Iceland. This happens and is the normal state in Iceland, even if Iceland is on top of hot spot and a rift zone. No earthquakes swarms are taking place, at least no major activity and Bárðarbunga volcano is quiet at the moment.
Future of my geophone network
I’ve figured out what I am going to do with my geophone network once I move back to Denmark in the year 2017 or 2018 (moving year is going to depending on my saving, it might happen sooner if I’m lucky). It is extremely difficult to maintain and keep my geophone network running when I move back to Denmark. So I am going to close it down for good. Running a remote network also makes it difficult for me to maintain it if a hardware failure takes place (and that is going to happen). The only geophone station that I can keep running after the year 2017 or 2018 is going to be the geophone in Heklubyggð and I am not sure for how many more years that station is going to last. What is important here is that I am running this geophone network on goodwill of people only, for things like housing and electricity. When people life change I often can’t keep my hardware (the geophone) up and running where they are. Doing so from Denmark complicates matter even more, since guidance over the telephone to fix a problem is difficult and often impossible to do from Denmark. Since I need to be around to replace the hardware that failed.
I am not going to stop recording earthquakes. I am just going to do so from Denmark. While I am won’t record as many earthquakes as in Iceland I am going to record any larger earthquakes (magnitude 6,0+) in Greece and other parts of south Europe. I would also record any earthquake in Denmark that goes above the noise threshold (it is high due to road traffic and trains).
My current backlog of earthquake data is now around 5 or 6 years, since past few years have been busy. Both for me and Iceland in terms of earthquake activity. Since I started recording earthquakes in the year 2006 I have recorded around 20.000 earthquakes and that number continues to go up with every year. Just in Bárðarbunga volcano activity in 2014 – 2015 I added around one year worth of earthquake data in less then six months. In any given earthquake swarm in Iceland I add from 100 and up to 1.000 earthquakes if the activity is close to my geophone or strong enough to be seen clearly on them, that is not always the case if the earthquake swarm that is taking place is a micro-earthquake swarm with earthquakes with magnitudes 0,0 – 2,0.
My geophones can be viewed here.
Donations: Even if it is quiet I am always in the need for donations to keep this website running and being able to do something. People can donate with the PayPal button or by buying stuff from Amazon (if needed). Thanks for the support. 🙂
And all of a sudden there’s two M3 earthquakes (both far out at sea) plus quite a few M2+. Nothing eyebrow-raising or a big deal of course, but still got me wondering about a probably really stupid question:
Could a cataclysmic eruption like the one at Calbuco (still less than a day ago) have any influence on, or being linked to, such remote volcanic systems as Iceland’s? Many long and complex chains of events, or whatnot. This planet is very big, I know, but it is still one single body of mass…
No. It is not connected. The activity in Iceland is within normal background activity at the moment. As for the risk of sudden eruptions like in Calbuco, I think every volcano carry such risk. In Iceland it is Öræfajökull and Snæfellsjökull that are the highest in that group, I don’t rule out other volcanoes that have been quiet for a long time. Hekla volcano is well documented for such eruptions.
Katla is hitting some deep M2s. Probably magma intruding.
The island of the fire giant just misses a green star this evening…
Saturday
25.04.2015 20:57:08 63.309 -20.631 15.9 km 2.9 99.0 1.6 km WSW of Surtsey