Readers may recall that the Grímsvötn volcano caused quite an overwrought mess with air travel in 2011 when it erupted. FergalR writes in WUWT Tips and Notes about the nearby Bárðarbunga volcano becoming seismically active:
A large sub-glacial volcano in Iceland – Bárðarbunga – has been having a huge earthquake swarm for the last 24 hours.
The IMO have just raised the eruption alert level on it.
Source: http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes
From the Icelandic Met Office:
Activity in Bárdarbunga volcano
Seismic activity in Bárðarbunga volcano has increased. A seismic swarm has been ongoing since 03AM this morning, and near continuous earthquakes have been occurring since then. The depths of earthquakes in the present swarm are in the upper crust and their magnitudes are mainly around 1.5; a few earthquakes are of magnitude greater than ML3.
Long-term seismic and GPS data indicate that there is increased unrest in the northwestern region of Vatnajökull glacier, where Bárðarbunga is located:
Over the last seven years seismic activity has been gradually increasing in Bárðarbunga and the fissure swarm north of the volcano. This activity dropped down at the Grímsvötn eruption in May 2011, but soon after, the activity started to gradually increase again and has now reached similar level of activity to that just before the Grímsvötn eruption. Earlier this year, in the middle of May 2014, there was a small swarm of over 200 events and now the present swarm has already generated at least 300 earthquakes.
Since early June 2014, displacements at GPS stations around Vatnajökull (Hamarinn, Grímsfjall, Vonarskarð and Dyngjuháls) show an increased upward movement and away from Bárðarbunga.
Together, these two systems indicate magma movements in Bárðarbunga. Due to increased seismicity IMO has decided to turn volcano Barðarbunga status to yellow. In case of a sub-aerial eruption, an ash plume of potential concerns for aviation will be generated. The updated map is available at the link: http://en.vedur.is/weather/aviation/volcanic-hazards/
At 23:00 on August 16, there is no unequivocal indication that magma has reached the surface.
http://en.vedur.is/about-imo/news/nr/2936
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Waiting for the NYT article to somehow connect this to climate change.
Hmmm. The USGS Earthquake page shows nothing at magnitude 2.5 or greater in the last month.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/#{%22feed%22%3A%2230day_m25%22%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22autoUpdate%22%3Atrue%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3Atrue%2C%22timeZone%22%3A%22local%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A[[54.67383096593114%2C-39.814453125]%2C[70.8734913192635%2C16.435546875]]%2C%22overlays%22%3A{%22plates%22%3Atrue}%2C%22viewModes%22%3A{%22map%22%3Atrue%2C%22list%22%3Atrue%2C%22settings%22%3Atrue%2C%22help%22%3Afalse}}
This volcano has a long history of a lot of intrusions without eruptions though. Hopefully this won’t be a big one, it is huge and capable of a lot of damage.
Global Volcanism Program | Bárdarbunga
http://www.volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=373030
Well, I don’t see any new earthquakes near Iceland on the USGS map, but they do have two underneath Oklahoma.
3.0 14km SW of Medford, Oklahoma 2014-08-16 22:13:43 UTC-04:00 5.0 km
3.4 10km WNW of Medford, Oklahoma 2014-08-16 06:54:25 UTC-04:00 4.1 km
Well they will get sufficient warning. But if the plume goes up high with lots of dust, it will cool the planet a bit. I agree they’ll blame the climate. Not geology.
Hmmmn.
So, a “sub-aerial eruption” (below aviation altitudes apparently) creates a worse plume than an aerial eruption (which would be at aviation altitudes obviously). Odd.
Yeah bush.
But you’re on the other side of the equator and everything works backwards down there. So obviously, temperatures down under will go up. 8<)
The small scale seismic map is at
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/
Our planet is always moving tectonic plates, or land falls. Shows it is still alive, unlike Mars.The one to watch is Vesuvius or Mt.Ararat. I don’t know much about Ararat, other than it did erupt and buried a bronze age village, but Vesuvius has people worried, as a bad earthquake proceeded the 79 AD eruption. Same with Thera (Santorini) These little shaking swarm may not be followed by an eruption, but – time will tell.
Reblogged this on The Next Grand Minimum and commented:
This could bring more cooling if it is big eruption with large dust/particle cloud. Stay Tuned.
Folks might be interested in following this volcano blog in Iceland by Jón Frímann:
http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/
Cookie, I hope they will we have had quite a cold winter, just a few weeks from Sept 1 spring. Then people will be moaning about the heat, well the water melons will. LOL.
Keep an eye on Katla with any swarm in the area.
Two of the three tri-radiates (alcogons) have magnitude three or greater quakes.
With two of three showing massive stress I would be a little worried too. GPS deflection noted. Crustal rise noted. Deformation unconfirmed and no venting observed.
Some folks are going to be sleeping very lightly tonight.
Jón Frímann makes a couple of notes at his blog: 1, the crust there is some 40km thick so there is the potential for some rather large quakes as magma makes its way to the surface. This particular volcano last erupted in 1794. It is currently covered with nearly a kilometer of glacial ice so if there is a surface eruption, it could create a major glacial flood. Also, he says this volcano is subject to “fissure” eruptions where very long openings can pour out a lot of magma in a short period of time.
Tremor graphs are available here: http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/oroi/allarsort.html
I was just looking at the harmonic tremor in the graphs. The tremor has been ongoing for a few days but it is constantly increasing in magnitude. It appears to be building. No release is apparent as of yet. interesting… one to watch.. historically a VEI 2 on average.
Wiki says that largest was a VEI 6, that’s pretty significant. The 1477 eruption caused the largest single lava flow known on the planet in the past 10,000 years (21 cubic kilometers). One fissure runs for 100km in length. This COULD be a very dangerous volcano.
Strange, just a week ago I’ve been driving along that long and windy, often washed away and repaired stretch of the Icelandic Ring Road from Höfn to Vik i Myrdal, right under Vatnajökull’s nose. It’s mostly a gravelly and sandy wasteland, barely covered with moss in places, with only a few sheep farms here and there, close under basalt cliffs. Hopefully, farmers will get an early warning before Bárðarbunga erupts — but they surely will have to rebuild that stretch of the road again.
Thanks to RIC and Crosspatch, good info, there seems to be a marked increase at all levels on the site. (besides Etna, Stromboli, Alaska and Hawaii and the list goes on,Kamchatka, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand the Philippines etc ) the world just seems to not care about us humans much now does it!.
Ahhh, so THIS is the cause of the pause…..
Cos I’m sure it will be….
“Feces Occur”
From memory, wasn’t airspace over Europe shutdown as a result of computer model predictions and no real threat from the erruption of Grímsvötn itself?
Had M3.9 quake at 5.6 km depth about 25 minutes ago and a 2.0 about 8.4km about 10 minutes before that. The 3.9 is the largest so far.
Since updated to M3.5 at 1.3 km depth.