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Uncertainty level declared on Hekla volcano

Uncertainty level has been declared on Hekla volcano due to strange earthquake activity in it for the past week or so. But in total of seven earthquakes where recorded in Hekla volcano at the depth of 11 to 12 km. This is highly unusual for Hekla volcano. People are advised against going up to Hekla volcano while uncertainty level is in force. It is also dangerous to be too close to Hekla volcano. Since if an eruption starts, it is going to start without any warning at all.

I am going to post updates on Hekla volcano as needed if anything happens. It is possible to watch activity live from Hekla volcano on my geophone page here. But I have a geophone located about 16 km away from Hekla volcano. List of web cameras that I know of are online and focused on Hekla volcano can be found here. Update 1: Web camera that is showing Hekla volcano (pictures) can also be found here.

News about this in English

Seismic activity in Mount Hekla (Rúv.is)

News about this in Icelandic

Ekki mikið um jarðskjálfta við Heklu (Rúv.is)
Óvenjuleg jarðskjálftahrina í Heklu (Rúv.is)
Engin bráðahætta á eldgosi (Rúv.is)
Jarðhræringar í Heklu: Óvissustig í gildi (Rúv.is)

Óvissustig vegna Heklu (mbl.is)
Engin sjáanleg merki um eldgos í aðsigi (mbl.is)
Hægt að fylgjast með Heklu (mbl.is)

Óvissustig vegna hugsanlegs goss í Heklu (Vísir.is)
Ferðamenn varaðir við að vera nærri Heklu (Vísir.is)
Fyrirvarinn yrði einn til tveir tímar (Vísir.is)

Ó­vissu­stig vegna ó­venju­legra hræringa í Heklu (DV.is)
„Hekla gaus með litlum fyrirvara síðast“ (DV.is)
Eftirlitsstig vegna Heklu hækkað úr grænu í gult (DV.is)

Blog post updated at 17:26 UTC on 26.03.2013.

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Two earthquakes on Reykjanes ridge

During the night and last night (20.03.2013) there where two earthquakes on the Reykjanes ridge. Location of this earthquakes is not the same and several hundreds of km between them. So they are in fact not connected at all. This is just by chance this activity takes place at the same time. As often is the case in this type of area.

The first earthquake was an magnitude 5.4 earthquake deep on the Reykjanes ridge. This earthquake was on 10 km, or at least that is the best estimate by EMSC. The distance from Reykjavík is about 1100 km. More information on this earthquake can be found here on EMSC web site.

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The magnitude 5.4 earthquake deep on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to EMSC.

The second earthquake was an magnitude 4.3 earthquake, with the default depth of 10 km according to GFZ. It had the distance about 850 km from Reykjavík. More information on this earthquake can be found here on EMSC web site.

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The magnitude 4.3 earthquake on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to EMSC.

It is impossible as before to know what is happening on at this location. Due to the depth of the ocean at this place and how remote this location is.

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New earthquake in Hekla volcano

This morning there was an earthquake in Hekla volcano at 08:23 UTC. This earthquake had the magnitude of 1.4 according to the reviewed data from Icelandic Meteorological Office. The depth of this earthquake was 11,2 km. But that is considerable depth for this location. This is most likely not tectonic earthquakes. But it is hard to be sure on that detail as of this moment.

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The earthquake in Hekla volcano is marked by an orange dot on this map. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

I do not have a clue what Hekla volcano is up to at the moment. But this is highly unusual activity for this volcano. Since normally there are no earthquakes in Hekla volcano until just before an eruption takes place in it. For the moment. The only thing that can be done now is to monitor what is taking place in Hekla volcano.

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Earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes ridge

Today (20.03.2013) at 10:51 UTC an earthquake swarm started on the Reykjanes ridge. This earthquake swarm was about 850 km away from Reykjavík so it was not felt. This also gives little information on what is happening in this location. Since the depth of the ocean at this location is around 2 to 3 km. The largest earthquake in this swarm had the magnitude of 4.8 according to automatic EMSC results. The range of magnitude that was detected is from 4.6 to 4.8. The estimated depth is around 10 km. But that might not be correct.

308986.regional.svd.20.03.2013
The location of the strongest earthquake in this swarm on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to EMSC.

More information on the strongest earthquake in this swarm can be found here, on the EMSC web site. I do not know if activity is going to continue in this place. This location is just too remote to know that for sure.

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Spam protection on registering new users

This is a sticky blog post. Please look at the newest one below this one.

I have put up rather heavy spam protection when users are registering. The reason is simple. This blog is getting flooded by spam registration and I cannot have that. Just in the past 24 hours that spam system has stopped 678 spam bots from registering (multiple tries). I am not saying this is going to stop all of the spam bots (I delete spam bots when I see comments from them). But it is going to stop many of them.

If you are going to register please follow the on screen guide. Do not register multiple times if your first attempt fails. Contact me or just wait 10 days and then try again. It might take some time for the email to arrive in some cases. This is not always the case and you should get your registration email right away.

If you are having problems with this new system please let me know so I can attempt to solve it for you.

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Magnitude 4.8 earthquake deep on the Reykjanes Ridge

During the night there was an earthquake deep on the Reykjanes ridge. This earthquake had the magnitude of 4.8 according to automatic result from EMSC.

308812.regional.svd.20.03.2013
The earthquake on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to EMSC.

Due to earthquakes location there is not a lot of details on it. But this location on the Reykjanes ridge has been seeing some activity in the past few months. This might well just be normal tectonic activity for this area. More information on this earthquake can be found here.

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Earthquake activity in Esjufjöll volcano

Earthquake activity has started again in Esjufjöll volcano after some time with no activity. The two earthquakes that where detected by the SIL network only had the magnitude of 1.0 and 1.1. But what is most interesting is there depth. But registered depth is around 0.1 km (around 100 meters). This really shallow depth for earthquakes in this location. While it is unclear what is creating this earthquake activity. The most likely reason is that an minor dike intrusion is taking place in the volcano. Last eruption in Esjufjöll volcano is believed to have taken place in the year 1920. But that has not been properly confirmed yet.

130318_1510
Earthquake activity in Esjufjöll volcano is marked by the red dots in Vatnajökull glacier. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

It is impossible to know for sure what is happening in Esjufjöll volcano. Not only is there little known about earlier eruption history of this volcano. It has also been poorly studied in the past. So what to expect if anything happens is not known properly. Based on earlier earthquake activity in this volcano from the year 2011 more earthquakes might happen in next few days to months. But it is impossible to know that for sure at the moment. But it is not an bad idea to monitor this volcano for any more activity in next few weeks.

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Weather has been problem for monitoring instruments on Mýrdalsjökull glacier this winter

Bad weather has been a major problems for monitoring Katla volcano (and others also) this winter in Iceland. Not only has the bad weather damaged communications setup for the instruments in question. But also has a lot of snowfall prevented solar chargers and windmills that generate power for this instruments made them fail. In many cases the instruments them self are also under several meters of snow in few cases.

This means that for long periods during this winter there have been no data recorded on several SIL stations on Mýrdalsjökull glacier. But last week technicians from Icelandic Meteorological Office and University of Iceland did go up to Mýrdalsjökull glacier to try and fix the broken instruments and hardware in question. They had some success. But have to return later to repair the hardware they where not able to repair this time around.

Icelandic news about this repair mission can be found here. This news is in Icelandic.

Mýrdalsjökull leikur mælitæki grátt (Rúv.is, Icelandic)
Fréttir: Jökullinn leikur mælitæki grátt (Icelandic, Video)

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Earthquake activity intensifies in Skjaldbreið

The earthquake activity that started in Skjaldbreið yesterday continues. This earthquake activity has been picking up in number of earthquakes. But when this blog post is written no earthquake has been over magnitude 2.0. That however might change if this earthquake activity picks up more from the current activity level.

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Earthquake activity in Skjaldbreið south of Langjökull glacier. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

It is hard to know what is going to happen in this earthquake swarm. But earthquake activity in this area is often “slow”, in the terms it is slow to start and reaching its high point. If that is going to happen now is impossible to know. All that can be done is to watch and see how this earthquake swarm progresses and if any stronger earthquakes start to appear. Stronger earthquakes might not appear at all in this earthquake swarm. But they also cannot be ruled out.