Magnitude 3,5 earthquake in Bárðarbunga volcano

Today (11-November-2016) a magnitude 3,5 earthquake took place in Bárðarbunga volcano. This earthquake, like so many before it, is due to inflation of the volcano that started in September-2015. This is going to be happening for a long time now, since last earthquake sequence that started this way started in 1973 and lasted until 1996 (science paper on it can be found here). After that it was quiet for few year until 2010-ish years before the eruption started in 2014.

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Earthquake activity in Bárðarbunga volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

This inflation and earthquake activity is going to lead to an eruption one day. When that is going to happen is impossible to know until it happens.

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14 Replies to “Magnitude 3,5 earthquake in Bárðarbunga volcano”

  1. That 7.8 quake was said to last over 3 minutes according to the one woman’s cell phone recording. In 24 hours they have had 36 jolts.

    1. I have a screen shot of the USGS map of that area in New Zealand showing all the quakes , but I cannot figure how to post it here?

  2. In feb 2011 the major quake in the same Christchurch NZ was followed 3 months later by Grimsvotns largest in 50 years. Is there a connection?

  3. Yes,

    Everything is connected and interdependent, however the degree of correlation between minor events is often difficult to distinguish and monitoring systems remain primitive at best.

    Dave

  4. There is no connection between earthquakes in Iceland and New Zealand. That is to far from each other. But you can observe, that at plate boundaries of the same plate, or neighbouring plate, there is sometimes something like a migration of tectonic events in a very short time frame. I can’t put the finger on it right now on an example, but quite often, after several years of silence, it rumbles let’s say in Chile, then a few days later near San Andreas fault system, then suddenly some volcano starts to erupt somewhere in the Andes.

  5. Stefan has that nailed although I would have pointed more at Redoubt volcano in Alaska burping. It happens often with the”ring of fire” events seem to do a circle around that whole ring so it is worth keeping an eye on other areas of the ring after the New Zealand rumbling, although I would say that this started in the Chile/Argentina area rumbled up through California ,Alaska , Japan and returned to New Zealand to trigger that event. I have been watching the USGS site for several weeks watching this circle running around the ring. Since I am on the Canada section of the ring its more out of concern since we have not had anything happen in years on our section. Worrying that we are more than overdue for something, so when I see the ring start a cycle its always a bit more nerve racking.

    1. And it has returned to argentina testerday a 6.4 near san Juan but 72km deep . As well as Japan . Busy ring

  6. Thats why I asked . Piña tubo is suspected to have been the successor to a M7.7 earthquake the previous year on Luzon.

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