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
Looking at the Table view they’re mostly low quality tremors:
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/#view=table
Hard to tell whether it’s ice and water moving or magma…
Follow Dave McGarvie @subglacial on twitter for updates.
Big trouble for flying in Europe again?
There have been 20 quakes of 2.0 or larger since the 3.5 last night.
Bjarki says:
August 17, 2014 at 2:31 am
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I am hearing that the fishing off of Bermuda is great this year. It may not be to late to change flights.
RACookPE1978 says:
August 16, 2014 at 9:13 pm
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.
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10 km across caldera + thick ice cap + melt water + magma = pulverized glassy fine rock shards propelled by massive steam explosions into upper troposphere and stations beyond.
The largest lava flow on Earth during the past 8,500 years came from this same caldera fissure complex and covered 950 square kilometers of central Iceland. This huge eruption coincided in time with the largest drop in global temperature with in the past 10,000 years which took 250 yrs to rise fully again.
This is a caldera, not just the usual volcanic vent or fissure, it’s 10 km across and 100 km^2. It is known to have the structure under it and feeder access from the mantle to flow the largest eruption in 10k years.
Calderas don’t get that big via small eruptions.
Larry says:
August 17, 2014 at 1:01 am
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I noticed one other connection to grand minima events. The New Madrid fault in the mid to eastern US also appears to be triggered by grand minima events. The most noted event was in the early 1800s which is right in the middle of the Dalton minimum. That was the first connection which made me look for further information. Then Wiki has an account of an early missionary in 1699. He was traveling up the Mississippi with an exploration group, when they experienced a heavy shaking of the land on Christmas Day at 1:00 pm, which he then documented. The time frame was the early part of the Maunder minimum. Then there is geological evidence which puts a quake event at 1450, which is the very beginning of the Sporer minimum. Wiki notes further events around 900 AD and 300 AD. Once again take a look at the JG/U 2K study and you can plainly see that both 900 AD and 300 AD show significant temp drops and are spaced properly to fit the grand minima cycle. At the time of the Great Tohoku Quake, I became very interested in quakes which led me to watch quake events worldwide on a daily basis ever since that time. I noticed that around 6 months after the Tohoku Quake that Oklahoma seemed to become active, and has steadily become more active ever since to where Oklahoma is now a regular participant on the USGS daily quake map. Offhand, I would say that it is time to pay extra attention to this region in connection with the current lowered levels of the Sun.
Also note that the main event in 1811 was on December16. That makes two notable quake events on that fault where both are in December and occur early on in a grand minimum event.
Jeo, it appears Solar proponents stepped in ahead of Anthropogenic proponents in suggesting a cause and effect connection. Lovely. It really puts the shine on our reputation as serious and well-informed opponents of AGW. Just lovely.
My take on the potential global impact: The Iceland volcano, even if a big one, will not likely cause global cooling. For that, it needs to be equatorial and sulfur rich such that sulfur gas will get caught in Walker Cell and trade wind circulations such that even if dust settles out in extratropical bands, a solar veil could stay in the equatorial band for quite some time, disrupting normal ENSO processes and their global teleconnections, while also preventing normal oceanic solar heating.
RACookPE1978 says:
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.
No, “sub-aerial” means “in the open air”. The opposite is not “aerial” but “sub-glacial”, i. e. under a glacier, which indeed does not produce much of a plume, if any, though the sudden melting of the ice can cause a “jökulhlaup” (glacier-run), i. e. a large flood.
Fortunately any likely erruption is likely to replace all of the CO2 that the stupid “emissions” policies have not allowed to return to the atmosphere. The biosphere needs the CO2.
I know of 2 triggers of explosive volcanic activity associated with grand minimums and I think I may have figured out a third. The first is the incremental action of the increased level of cosmic rays reaching Earth’s atmosphere that generate muons when they strike atmospheric molecules. Refer “Explosive volcanic eruptions triggered by cosmic rays – volcano as a bubble chamber”. It is paywalled. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X10001966
There is a good explanation of the changes in stress on tectonic plates in the comments by Geo and subsequent in http://iceagenow.info/2014/05/volcanic-eruptions-coincide-sunspot-activity/
It relates to the incremental stresses on tectonic weaknesses caused by reduced solar activity and the associated changes in jet stream activity.
Finally, and this is only my view, but the gravitational forces that cause 2 grandfather clocks in the same room to eventually harmonize their rhythms seem to incrementally add to stresses on tectonic weaknesses. So when the gas giant planets were all close to alignment in the early part of this century each time Earth passed across this alignment (twice a year) it copped a little of these extra gravitational harmonics (with the help of the moon). As a result since 2003 there have been 20 great (Cat 8+) earthquakes yet the previous 20 occurred from 1949 to 2002.
There is also a little remembered paper written by Richard B Stothers of NASA in 1989 entitled “Volcanic Eruptions and solar activity”. http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/st07500u.html.
I suspect that the key to understanding why little ice-ages can have such an influence on mankind is not because of the direct effects of the change in TSI but the indirect effects caused by the changes in the jet streams and the increased tectonic activity.
Brief Bárdarbunga caldera eruption style and history:
The largest known Holocene lava flow known occurred from this volcano about 8,500 years ago.
Last known large effusive eruptions: 870 AD, 1477 AD.
The volcano’s eruption sequences suggest it averages one large eruption approximately every 500 years during the past 10,000s.
537 years since the last large eruption.
Other known or suspected eruption years:
1080(?), 1159(?), ca. 1210, ca. 1270, ca. 1350, ca. 1410(?), 1477 (very large effusive-explosive eruption), 1697, 1702, 1706, 1712, 1716, 1717, 1720, 1726, 1729, 1739, 1750, 1766, 1769, 1797, 1807(?), 1862-64, 1872(?), 1902-03
Apparently quiet since the 1903 eruption then about seven years ago a slow and gradual increase in quake activity indicated sustained magma ascent. These steady quakes elevated since about May 11th 2014. The prior quiescent period of 111 years since the 1903 eruption is less typical. From the above list numerous smaller eruptions were frequent after the last large event in 1477. Volcano Discovery states;
Typical eruption style: Large effusive eruptions, some explosive activity.
It is now within its normal time interval for the next large eruption.
– Compiled from Wikipedia and Volcano Discovery links.
Pamela Gray says:
August 11, 2014 at 4:17 pm
“(trimmed) … These ash plumes are dense locally, regionally for the bigger ones, and their longer lasting stratospheric veils are implicated as a direct cause in epic global cooling events. (trimmed) The Pacific Equatorial band is a very large body of water absorbing heat energy to a depth of 300 or more meters. In our thought experiment, a 20% reduction in the watts it absorbs is no small thing. …”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/06/recent-paper-finds-recent-solar-grand-maximum-was-a-rare-or-even-unique-event-in-3000-years/
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Pamela, pardon my out of context re-posting of your comment from a few days back. You take interest so I have a question and point to make to you and others which routinely gets overlooked.
You (and basically most others) rightly acknowledge the undeniable role of prosaic volcanic eruptive cycle implications in multi-year cooling. No problem with that. You (and others) also freely recognize the role of the oceans in modulating multi-year and multi-decadal weather patterns. Note that I avoid all use of the word ‘climate’, as it’s use is almost but not quite irrelevant and inappropriate in under 500 year contexts, whereas climate and geologically significant scales of change are joined at the hip and completely inseparable, i.e. unitary.
What’s automatically and breezily overlooked is that oceanic geodynamic energy release and the resulting topographic isostatic equilibrium elevation and volcanism levels are at a minimum twice as active within the ocean basins, as they are above the waves.
We also do not know what scale of activity constitutes a major submarine volcanic eruptive event. They may be (and most probably are) much larger events and more regular, due to the very thin crust, and close and elevated mantle-asthenosphere and isotherms, due to being sited above an epic global scale elongated hot spots and globe-encompassing volcanic extrusive mounds about a thousand kilometers across. Not to mention the thousands of large individual volcanic sea mounts further away from the volcanic ridge mounds, many of which dwarf the largest volcanoes on land by around an order of magnitude.
If we were to observe an orbiting space video of earth, sans all of its watery clothing, we would be darned impressed by what we see before us. Suddenly many thing would begin to make a whole lot of sense. We would no longer think Valles Marineris was the most impressive rift feature in the solar system. It would instead be totally obvious to us that Earth’s mid-ocean ridge volcanic spreading network is vastly and shockingly more impressive. And not only that, it is volcanically active for its entire length. If there were no water covering it we would see semi-continuous extrusions and volcanic outgassing events on a fairly shocking scale.
Alas, its all covered over with very deep water so we’re aware of maybe >0.1% of its activity, and perceptually ~99% of scientists and >99.999% of climate scientists are apparently completely oblivious to its existence. The see it on oceanic bathymetry and maps but the epic active volcanic reality of it doesn’t pass the thought filter barrage to register as a, “Hey, maybe major episodic regional submarine volcanic eruptions, like those we occasionally see on land, are significant to ocean circulation and global out-gassing and weather? Could they act as be a trip-wire for climate change?”.
We don’t know.
Because even a blindman or a child can see the potential exists and it’s geographically extensive. The mid-ocean ridge volcanic network’s combined length is about 60,000 km, while the much focused-on trenches and their landward side continental and back-arc volcanic complex which we actually see eruption from, have a total length of a bit less than 30,000 km. While ~7 km thick oceanic crust covers ~65% of Earth’s surface (only ~20% as thick as continental crust) and is festooned with enormous volcanic sea mounts that make any volcano above the waves look pitiful and tiny. These did not get that big via small tentative eruptions nor by occasional shrinking-violet eruptions. It may turn out that many if not most punctuated global extinctions were caused via submarine volcanism.
But shock of shocks the oldest oceanic crust is a mere ~205 million years old (NE of Sakhalin Island), and over 60% of the rest of the oceanic crust is less than 100 million years old. Which means almost all of the oceanic volcanism which produced this spectacular global MOR ridge complex and the giant sea mount volcano chains, is geologically very recent activity. It’s not old, it is not extinct, it is not winding down. It’s geologically very new and periodic eruptions are large episodes that overprint lower-level quasi-continuous extrusion, going on all of the time.
But … alas, all covered over … never see it … what is it? … nope, never heard of it … even those aware of it have little to no time-series systematic observations of it … so how do we address it? … how do we include it? … well, we don’t! … it doesn’t even enter our minds … its absence, perpetually unnoticed … “whatchya talkin’ ’bout Willis?!!”.
It’s the ultimate weather-cycle blind-spot, as opposed to a weather-cycle Sun-spot. But we’re not going to understand the wet-spot until we deal with the blind-spot. Keep that forever in mind each time you ponder ocean weather cycle mechanisms and climate trend and switching mechanisms.
Given you (and many others) recognize the implications for atmospheric circulation and weather cycles above the waves, due to large volcanic events, whence this unrecognized neglect of the almost certainly more significant submarine volcanic activity and its implications for ocean circulation and weather cycle inputs from under the waves, given the active geographical area for such events to occur within is multiple times larger and more active?
This is omitted from the whole discussion of weather cycles and also the longer-term climatic variations, which are joined-at-the-hip with geological processes and time scales.
So why not joined-at-the-hip for ocean and weather cycle scale as well? Whence this blind-spot?
The oceanic crust is nothing more than a fragile ultra-thin cap on a circum-global network of hot rising mantle sheet-plumes. Forget the Pacific ring of fire, this is in every ocean basin’s heart! This is earth’s major thermal contribution to the low density bits of liquid and gas above the solid crust.
Nah, that couldn’t be significant.
Weather cyclicity via ocean cyclicity is not going to be adequately understood and described without explicit detailed time-series monitoring reference to geodynamic cyclicity, which actively created and grew and maintains the oceanic terrain which completely dominates the planet’s surface and its weather systems.
It’s very heartening of course that the role of solar variation and cosmic particles are finally being taken into account, but consider this silly scenario; If you put a pot full of warm water on a stove, and set it to low heat, would you then try to explain the observed local water and vapor cycles over time in and around that pot, sans reference to what’s going on immediately under and in direct contact with it? Or only with reference to direct radiative and indirect input mechanisms from the powerful incandescent light bulb above the pot?
I submit that in 100 years when we’ve finally invested in a global deep ocean floor monitoring network we’ll look back at the discussions of weather and climate cycles early this century with a wry smile, a small nasal snort, and an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
What is the VEI potential with this one?
Don;t know, guessing a glacier filled caldera can be VEI ~5, occasionally 6, averaging 4.
Despite lovely cool end to summer (3 degrees C. northern England next Friday) this may be relevant. Next 5 days of upper level winds at 250 hPa continually blow from central Iceland to England and North Sea into central Europe then central Russia.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#2014/08/23/0000Z/wind/isobaric/250hPa/orthographic=9.42,46.79,537
Hopefully what if anything eventuates isn’t full throated.
Smithsonian reports
870 AD eruption VEI = 4
1477 AD eruption VEI = 6
[their states text]
The large central volcano of Bárdarbunga lies beneath the NW part of the Vatnajökull icecap, NW of Grímsvötn volcano, and contains a subglacial 700-m-deep caldera. Related fissure systems include the Veidivötn and Trollagigar fissures, which extend about 100 km SW to near Torfajökull volcano and 50 km NE to near Askja volcano, respectively. Voluminous fissure eruptions, including one at Thjorsarhraun, which produced the largest known Holocene lava flow on Earth with a volume of more than 21 cu km, have occurred throughout the Holocene into historical time from the Veidivötn fissure system. The last major eruption of Veidivötn, in 1477, also produced a large tephra deposit. The subglacial Loki-Fögrufjöll volcanic system located SW of Bárdarbunga volcano is also part of the Bárdarbunga volcanic system and contains two subglacial ridges extending from the largely subglacial Hamarinn central volcano; the Loki ridge trends to the NE and the Fögrufjöll ridge to the SW. Jökulhlaups (glacier-outburst floods) from eruptions at Bárdarbunga potentially affect drainages in all directions. http://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=373030
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VEI = 6 and major tephra deposition in 1477.
Yup, plenty dangerous that complex.
Numbers here:
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/vogripa/searchVOGRIPA.cfc?method=detail&id=2338
1477 eruption calculated within Larsen 1984 as VEI = 5.4 with andesitic magma.
Which explains the explosiveness and the tephra.
But how is a mantle originated MOR plume banging out andesite?!!
I find it interesting, too, that USGS map shows no activity at all for anywhere in Iceland. Wonder why? But, it is sort of exciting because we’ll be traveling there in three weeks. 🙂
Alert level raised to orange …
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/18/iceland-volcano-idUSL5N0QO2NV20140818
Yesterday the roads on the highlands north of Vatnajökull were close for safety reasons. Thay are mainly used by tourists during the summer months. The water surge (glacier flood or jökulhlaup) from the glacier is most likely to flow to the north.
Jökulhlaup is an Icelandic word that has been adopted by the English language. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6kulhlaup
Rapid magma movement confirmed with rapid ground movements
http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/
GPS sensors and tilt meters indicate area is dilating fast during last few hours.
http://strokkur.raunvis.hi.is/gps/DYNC_rap.png
People in Europe get ready for ash fall, it’ll be overhead within hours of this thing popping.