Strong earthquake swarm on Reykjanes ridge close to Geirfugladrangur and Eldeyjarboða

This evening on 16-October-2022 an strong earthquake swarm started close to Geirfugladrangur and Eldeyjarboða on the Reykjanes ridge. At the writing of this article the strongest earthquake had a magnitude of Mw4,4 but that might change without warning.

Red dots and green stars on the Reykjanes ridge out on the ocean. Reykjanes peninsula on the left side of the image
Earthquake activity close to Geirfugladrangur and Eldeyjarboða on the Reykjanes ridge. Image from Icelandic Met Office.

It is difficult to know how this earthquake swarm is going to evolve but there are clues in this activity that this might be a large earthquake swarm. However, activity in this area is also known to just stop without warning.

Earthquake swarm close to Geirfugladrangur on Reykjanes Ridge

On Monday (4-July-2022) an earthquake swarm started close to Geirfugladrangur on Reykjanes ridge. Largest earthquake on Monday had a magnitude of Mw3,2 and on Tuesday a magnitude Mw3,1 earthquake took place.

Green star on the Reykjanes ridge out in the ocean. Showing the centre of the earthquake activity
Earthquake activity on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

This earthquake activity is what seems to be increase in earthquake activity overall on Reykjanes peninsula and on the Reykjanes ridge. The ocean is deep at this location and an eruption would have to be a big one to break up to the ocean surface because of depth in the area. I don’t know how many earthquakes have happened in this area, because of more activity on Reykjanes peninsula in last few days.

Earthquake recordings

Because of how old my hardware is and difficulty keeping it running. I have for now stopped recording earthquakes. This is going to be the situation until I can get new hardware. When that happens I don’t know. Raspberry Shake has few stations in Iceland. They can be viewed here. This is the hardware I am going to be using once I can afford to buy it. When that happens I don’t know.

Donations

Please remember to support my work with donations. I am currently really broke, because moving is expensive and I had to pay a lot of bills in July. Thanks for the support. 🙂