Posted on by Jón Frímann

Earthquake activity north of Grindavík town in Reykjanes volcano

Early morning of 11-July-2021 an earthquake swarm took place north of Grindavík town. Largest earthquake in this swarm had a magnitude of Mw2,5. Most of the other earthquakes had a magnitude of Mw0,0 to Mw1,0. There was also an earthquake swarm on Reykjanestá area that is part of Reykjanes volcano.

Earthquake activity north of Grindavík town show as cluster of small orange dots on Icelandic Met Office image.
Earthquake activity on Reykjanes peninsula in Reykjanes volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

It is difficult to know for sure what this earthquake activity means for this volcano. Since it has already been proven that eruption activity can start on Reykjanes peninsula without any warning or earthquake activity. Currently there are no clear indicators that suggest anything is about to happen but that can change without warning.

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9 Replies to “Earthquake activity north of Grindavík town in Reykjanes volcano”

  1. I have just witnessed the strangest thing I have ever seen. On the mbl “closeup cam” at

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuLhOThj3Yg

    If you start watching at 2021-07-13 08:04 and watch for a couple of minutes, as the fountains occur in the crater, you will see a large piece of rock rise on the right side of the picture near where there is a large “tooth” of rock that sticks up. This rock rises until the fountains subside and by 08:08 disappears completely from view. It is almost like this rock is acting like a piston which is being forced up by pressure and then drops when the pressure subsides. I scrolled back in the video and it seems to have been doing this for a few hours at least.

  2. I also noticed a posting on Facebook from Eldfjallafræði og náttúruvárhópur Háskóla Íslands that mentions that the new vent leaking lava to Meradalir does not appear to be coming from the same lava feeding into the crater. It appears to be a leak from the crater pool. The lava going into the crater from the feeder dike is very rich in gas which escapes during the fountain episodes. The lava that pools in the crater has lost much of this gas. They note that the lava leaving from the hole in the side of the crater is de-gassed lava which means it is most likely leaking from the pool in the cone and not from the transport channel.

  3. That must be part of what remains of the eastern wall of the crater. I think that collapsed yesterday (12-July) or before that (11-July). Difficult to be sure because of all the fog in the area.

  5. You can bet that wherever mbl moves the camera, the lava will stop flowing there 🙂

    1. The fix for that is for Jon to say that the eruption has gone quiet 😉

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