![yearly_activity[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/yearly_activity1.png?quality=75)
From the Icelandic Meteorological Office:
A summary of seismic activity, written Tuesday evening 19th August 2014 at 20:00
Around 1.000 small earthquakes were detected in the Bárðarbunga region from midnight (18/19) until Tuesday evening 19th August at 20:00. All of them were smaller than magnitude 3 and most were located in the cluster east of Bárðarbunga.
While the northern cluster close to Kistufell has calmed down significantly following the M4.5 earthquake on early Monday morning, event rates in the eastern cluster are still high. Similar to recent days, two pulses of comparably strong seismic activity have been measured between 04:00 and 08:00 this morning, as well as 16:00 and 18:30 in the afternoon. The cluster east of Bárðarbunga continued to slowly migrate northeastwards today. Events are still located at around 5-12 km depths, no signs of upwards migration has been seen so far.
Below is a summary map of all manually revised earthquakes since the onset of the swarm, which illustrates the migration of earthquake activity during the last days. Earthquakes in the map are colour coded by time, dark blue dots show the onset of the swarm on Saturday, orange dots Tuesday’s events until 19:00, light blue and yellow are the days in between. The time scale is days since the onset of the swarm.
Map by Gunnar B. Guðmundsson, Icelandic Meteorological Office.
via WUWT commenter “unmentionable”:
From the quotes below it sound like they’re crossing their fingers and toes that this thing stays underground and does not get any bigger. the longer the tremor goes on like this the worse its going to be if it pops under 2,000 ft of water ice.
___
Magma flowing into Bárðarbunga caldera with great force – 20th August 2014
http://www.visir.is/magma-flowing-into-bardarbunga-caldera-with-great-force/article/2014140829931
Kristín Vogfjörð, seismologist and research director at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, says that the activity is very powerful. “This just keeps going on. This is many times more powerful than what’s been going on in recent years.” Kristín says that a large volume of magma is flowing under the caldera, heading northeast towards the Kverkfjöll mountain range. The magma is staying at a depth of 5-10 kilometers – there are no signs of it moving any closer to the surface. If asked if an eruption is due to happen in the next few days, Kristín responds: “Not necessarily. There’s nothing suggesting that it’s about to. But due to the size and scale of the activity there’s full reason to be vigilant and prepare for an eruption.”
Magma surge towards the surface would be very powerful – 20th August 2014
http://www.visir.is/magma-surge-towards-the-surface-would-be-very-powerful/article/2014140829927
Kristín Vogfjörð, research director at the Icelandic Meteorological Office, says that the current seismic activity at Bárðarbunga is many times more powerful than any on record for the site. “It’s very powerful,” she says. For comparison she notes that thousands of quakes have been measured at Bárðarbunga in the past week, but in the Gjálpar eruption in 1996 they were only a few hundred. … “While this is going on, it may never reach the surface. But we still need to keep an eye on it because the volume of magma is incredible,” she adds. …”There is no indication that it’s moving further up than that. But if it were to happen, it would happen very quickly,” Kristín states.
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Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Oklahoma has nothing on Iceland! That one little island is having 50 an hour.
North Atlantic tectonics about to strike?
See Vuk’s graphs
… and the emitted carbon dioxide … ?
Large volume means cools slowly. There’s a lot of molten rock down there that is not going to be solid any time soon… unless it’s not down there anymore…
Hope this doesn’t happen.
Some history: http://m.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/17/1322378/-Just-To-Let-You-All-Know
Hockey stick alert!
(Oh wait. This is based on real measurements …)
What happens now? Iceland has a population of about 330,000 people – when does the evacuation of these folk start? Do we wait for this to blow and take the risk it will wipe out most of the island?
When the volcano blows it will perhaps create another Island like Surtsey. Surtsey was created in 1963 by an eruption in Iceland. Iceland is on the Mid Atlantic Ridge and as such is separating. Half of the Island is moving towards Europe and half to North America. The separation is about 6 feet in 60 years.. In parts of Iceland you can walk through the separation gap in the expansion joint. So Iceland will always have Volcanic and Earthquake activity as our Planet Expands. What we have to do as ,supposedly intellegent people, is to accept the earth expansion reality and debunk “Isostatic Rebound” Isostatic Rebound has been mistaken for Earth Expansion all along. The Ice age therefore is a Myth and I can prove both hypotheses. Earth Expansion has been ongoing for millions of years while Isostatic Rebound is the figment of Darwin’s imagination which gained a following and resulted in the Rebound Theory. Nothing like that is reality it all a myth. Earth Expansion has been miatakenly termed Isostatic Rebound because as the Earth Expands Se alevels fall. and that is where Darwin went wrong.
Richard Guy ” THe Mysteriouos Receding Seas” on You Tube and Google and WEb Page : https://xbraille.wix.com/receding-seas Tel; 914-563-8529
Winds not favourable for UK and Europe …
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/850hPa/orthographic=-0.87,57.19,1821
Kawabunga ! , that will be something to see, and write a new chapter in the “here’s why the models don’t work” soap opera.
What does it mean when somebody describes a volume of magma as “incredible?” I’m not a vulcanologist — is this typical media hype-talk, or does “incredible” actually mean just that?
From Paul’s link ….”Barðárbunga stretches out over 200 kilometers long. It has a large eruption every 250-600 years. One of its eruptions before settlers arrived was 21-30 cubic kilometers of lava. Like her little brother Laki, she’s associated with massive amounts of toxic gas release.”
Mt Pinotoba produced about half the lava of this and without anywhere near the volume of gas. And of course it was not under ice cover so the lahars from Pinotoba will be nothing compared with what could happen here!
If it blows, we will have excuse #32 for the pause……
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/lahar/
“Lahar is an Indonesian term that describes a hot or cold mixture of water and rock fragments flowing down the slopes of a volcano and (or) river valleys. When moving, a lahar looks like a mass of wet concrete that carries rock debris ranging in size from clay to boulders more than 10 m in diameter. Lahars vary in size and speed. Small lahars less than a few meters wide and several centimeters deep may flow a few meters per second. Large lahars hundreds of meters wide and tens of meters deep can flow several tens of meters per second–much too fast for people to outrun.”
Reblogged this on The Next Grand Minimum and commented:
Volcanic activity has played a role in grand minimum cooling. We could see some Norther Hemisphere cooling with the eruption of this volcano.
Two good sources for info:
http://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/
http://www.wired.com/category/eruptions/
I have a bad feeling about this..
The prevailing winds in Iceland are toward the east and the most heavily populated area of Iceland is to the west and southwest of Bárðarbunga. That may mitigate the effects somewhat on the population if a major eruption occurs.
John
My Icelandic was never very good but the right hand legend is “Days From” and the color codes are how many days after 16 August 2014 so you can see the tracks.
Yfirfarith (the crossed “d” is a soft “eth” like the th in “mother”) means Yfir (over) farith (the fare, traveling, go, as in English “fare” like fare well).
Or in other words, traveled over (land) starting from 16 August for 4 days.
This is almost on the centerline of the watershed flowing northeast and southwest under the largest glacier on east central Iceland. It would produce an enormous amount of water that would break loose in a flood going both directions cutting off the ring road. It’s far enough from Reyjkavik to not perhaps be a serious problem to the city.
It might pose a risk to Kharanjukar dam.
Hope this thing fizzles out … if it blows, it’ll ruin the day for a lot of people … and give us another bitterly cold winter.
If it erupts it might send a billion pounds of chlorine directly into the stratosphere. Of course those are good little chlorine atoms, not like those horrid man-made chlorine compounds that stay near the ground and when the ozone molecules see them from 50 miles up they decompose. Nor all the other hydro-X gasses that when in water form sulfuric, nitric, or hydrochloric acid. Don’t be silly, acid rain comes from coal fired plants – including when Portland OR had clothing dissolving a century ago, it couldn’t possibly be from the erupting Alaskan volcano.
Now if only Mt Ranier erupts totally destroying the Puget Sound area and disrupting those awful coal trains…
If it blows, I’m sure that someone will blame it on increased CO2.
“If it blows, I’m sure that someone will blame it on increased CO2.”
And the usual suspects will blame it on Booooooosh, Bob. (Or the Jooooooos. Or both.) >:-(
Time to listen.
You can bet the CAGW grant hounds are desperately praying to the volcano god Pele that this gigantic volcano blows it’s top, because if it does, it’ll be the ultimate excuse to explain away the 18 years of flat/falling global temperature trends and future anemic trends for decades.
Volcanism is already a common excuse used by CAGW grant hounds to explain away the entire Little Ice Age (1280~1850) that lasted for about six centuries..
If she blows, and it’s as big as previous Baroarbunga eruptions, it could well be a career saving phenomenon for many of these feckless hacks.
Interestingly enough, there appears to be a link between volcanic activity and solar activity at maxima and minima during 11 year cycles.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/st07500u.html