Tag: Ocean

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Unconfirmed report about ash cloud off the coast of Krýsuvík-Trölladyngja volcano (Krísuvíkurberg)

This is possible mistaken reporting. There have been reporting of ash clouds or steam clouds off the coast during the evening of 7-August-2021. This would be in the volcano system Krýsuvík-Trölladyngja.

The ash cloud or steam cloud would indicate an activity off the coastline or possible eruption activity in the ocean. Explosive events like that appear a lot more clearly as harmonic tremor on SIL stations and according to news reports nothing has been seen so far in the harmonic tremor data. There have been no earthquake activity in the area where the clouds are supposed to have been seen.

The coast guard has been sent to this area, as they where nearby anyway. I don’t know if anything has been reported so far. The weather is fine in south Iceland and I don’t think there is a lot of ocean waves, but as this is the Atlantic ocean there can be ocean waves even if there is no wind, since the ocean waves can arrive from parts of the ocean with bad weather thousands of kilometres away.

If anything new is reported I am going to update this article or write a new one.

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Strong earthquake swarm ongoing on Reykjanes ridge

At midnight on 1-August-2021 an earthquake swarm seems to have started deep on the Reykjanes ridge. The current distance seems to be around 220 km away from Reykjavík or 190 km from Grindavík town. At this distance the location from Icelandic Met Office are not accurate. At the writing of this article the earthquake swarm seems to be ongoing.

Earthquake activity deep on the Reykjanes ridge. Many green stars are on the map that goes south along the Reykjanes ridge
The earthquake activity as it is shown on Icelandic Met Office map. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Largest earthquake recorded at the writing of this article had a magnitude of Mw5,2 and the rest of the earthquakes have magnitude between Mw4,0 and Mw4,8. Overview of this earthquake activity can be found here on EMSC website. This links works as I publish this article. How long it is going to work I don’t know.

The current distance makes it impossible to know for sure what is going on at this location. The pattern of this earthquake activity suggests that this might be earthquake activity because of magma movement in the crust, but there is not any way to confirm this because of the location. Even if there is an eruption at this location it won’t make any difference to the surface of the ocean, since depth of the ocean at this location is more than 1 km. I don’t know the exact depth.