![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.
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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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That ain’t a hockey stick, it’s a putter. But the time series does not tell the real story, the geographic distribution does. It is a soliton wave progressing northeastward on a path if the grey color is any indication has been followed many times before.
@ur momisugly Peter,
They’d know but not sure what Icelandic air traffic control protocol is. Do they restrict the airspace? I’m pretty sure there would be a NOTAM and airline companies can choose to file around the area but I’m not overly familiar with oceanic control.
Authorities have evacuated residents in the area. This sounds quite serious.
Most of the events are now in the depth of 1 to 5 km. This link shows this in realtime:
http://baering.github.io/
Everything is still OK here in Iceland. But while we are waiting… What Does an Earthquake Sound Like?…
What do earthquakes and music have in common? A lot, says musician Halldór Eldjárn. He has set up a webpage where he has converted the earthquakes from Bárðarbunga volcano to music. The Reykjavík Jazz Festival ends today and thus the experiment is very timely.
“I just had to do this,” Halldór told mbl.is. He started working on the project last night and published it early this morning. “Some guys had made a 3D graph but since music is my scene, creating music on the computer in one way or the other, I thought it would be just the thing to use the data for this purpose. I use the depth and size of each quake to make the tones. I use a certain scale to make sure it does not sound like complete nonsense. A low tone means the quake occurs way below the surface. The more frequent the quakes become the more notes there will be. In case there is an eruption this will sound like heavy metal rock!” Halldór continued.
Listen to the results of his project at his webpage, The Sounds of the Earthquakes in Bárðarbunga:
http://halldorel.github.io/
A young programmer mapped the Bárðarbunga quakes in a 3D model:
http://www.visir.is/mapped-the-bardarbunga-quakes-in-a-3d-model/article/2014140818807
More 3D:
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/2948
What always boggles my mind with volcanoes is the volume of ejected material, from cubic miles/km of ash and rock to the amount of gas of all sorts. Having worked with CL2/SO2 liquid in 800kg drums it is hard to imagine many many times those volumes pouring out of a volcanic vent.
Lots of volcanoes gently vent these gases all day every day but when on blows wow.
James Bull
Fresh news in English can sometimes found here. Look for “Bárðarbunga Volcano Watch”:
http://grapevine.is/
“MAK says:
August 20, 2014 at 11:03 pm”
Activity at that focal depth would be tectonic rather than volcanic?
@MAK
That has to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen. I work in real time oil and gas exploration drilling visualisation and we update wellbore trajectories and petrophyscial logs in apps like this.
Awesome.
Video from the 1995 Gjálp in Vatnajökull eruption and glacier surge (jökulhlaup). German language:
Long (50 min) Video about Vatnajökull. English language:
Directely to the 3D model video:
Lots of very recent consistent small shallow ‘quakes’ over a large area, some high quality:
14.5 km SE of Kistufelli Mag=1.3 5 minutes ago depth 2km Quality 90.01%
15.4 km ESE of Kistufelli Mag=1.5 6 minutes ago depth 1.4km Quality 90.03%
13.7 km NW of Kverkfjöllum mag=1.4 18 minutes ago depth 1.1km Quality 60.82%
5.5 km NE of Bárðarbungu Mag=1 15 minutes ago depth 1.1km Quality 90.06%
13,7 km NW of Kverkfjöllum Mag=1.4 20 minutes ago depth 1.1km Quality 60.82%
5.5 km NE of Bárðarbungu Mag=1 21 minutes ago depth 1.1km Quality 90.06%
2.8 km E of Bárðarbungu Mag=0.7 21 minutes ago depth 1.3km Quality 44%
18.9 km NNW of Kverkfjöllum Mag=0.4 25 minutes ago depth 1.1km Quality 36.79%
Mod please see awaiting mod comment(s) in the old thread – thankyou
Last time this happened we had taken a night flight from Miami to Paris, we landed at 08:00 very jet lagged. My son said that all flights back to UK were cancelled, I told him I was in no mood to be wound up, but I looked at departure boards and sure enough they were all cancelled. When I asked an Air France rep what was happening she said “Icelandic Volcano” in broken English. I thought she was drunk or demented. To cut a long story short as the airport kept gettting busier and busier I realised we had to do something quickly or be stranded. Air France said they would put us in a hotel overnight and fly us back to Newcastle the next day. I knew this was not going to happen, because the dust would be in the atmosphere for days. We got home early evening the following day after I booked all five of us in a taxi, two trains, a ferry another train and another taxi at a cost of £750 using a laptop in Charles de Gaulle airport. The next day I found out that 1000’s of people were stranded. A word of advice if this happens again ACT QUICKLY
SasjaL says:
August 20, 2014 at 3:55 pm
… and the emitted carbon dioxide … ?
__
Not just that, Laki eruption, a similar duel parallel fissure-swarm, 50 km south, in 1783 released ~120 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide. There’s your less alkaline ocean mechanism right there. That’s going on under the waves as well. Iceland is just a beached version of a mid-ocean ridge rift, when all is said and done.
Volcanic cause mechanism, not silly misanthropic blame-games.
Michael 2 says:
August 20, 2014 at 5:28 pm
“My Icelandic was never very good but the right hand legend …”
The word “yfirfarið” on the map means reviewed or confirmed data, not raw data.
“Yfirfarið from 16 ágúst 2014” = “Reviewed from 16 Agust 2014”
“Dagar frá 16. ágúst 2014” = “Days from 16 Agust 2014”
RACookPE1978 says:
August 20, 2014 at 7:10 pm
Trends.
The Good News is … The plotted earthquakes are not getting closer to the surface, nor are they significantly larger over these four days.
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More trends for you, see comment just out of moderation land within the old thread
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/16/earthquake-swarm-in-iceland-raises-threat-level-on-bardarbunga-volcano/#comment-1713831
The core focus of the Bardarbunga complex is uniquely perverse in its dynamic responses to harmonic tremor and significant quakes.
I suspect the shallow quakes that I’ve listed above are icesheet adjustments to the horizontal dilation across the fissure complex. The Dyngjuháls CGPS site continues to steadily displace (quickly) as magma fills and opens wider the fissure-swarm conduit.
http://strokkur.raunvis.hi.is/gps/DYNC_3mrap.png
Oh, one thing more in that, when Grimsvötn blew in 2011, roughly 1 hour before it blew the ground subsided measurably, presumably due to horizontal crustal extension from magma decompression gas increase, which pushed the walls apart and undermined its cap rock.
The researchers said after that event that they wanted another eruption to test this theory on, namely that the GPS ground drop is directly proportional to the eruption cloud formed after the drop.
They may be about to get that test, note the ‘Up’ axis value just went negative. The ground near that GPS station is suddenly subsiding, even as seismic activity has intensified.
Most recent earthquake maps at Iceland Met Office:
http://www.vedur.is/skjalftar-og-eldgos/yfirlit/bardarbunga-2014/
Top map: Yfirfarnir skjálftar frá miðnætti = Reviewed/confirmed earthquakes since midnight.
Yfirfarið í dag = Reviewed to-day.
Klst frá miðnætti = Hours from midnight
Middle map: Óyfirfarnir skjálftar frá miðnætti = Not reviwed earthquakes since midnight.
Óyfirfarið í dag, Gæði>50 = Not reviewed to-day, Quality>50
Klst frá miðnætti = Hours from midnight
Bottom map: Yfirfarnir skjálftar frá 16. ágúst 2014 = Reviewed quakes since 16 August 2014
Dagar frá 16. ágúst 2014 = Days since 16 August 2014
“Skjálftarnir hafa mismunandi liti eftir því hve langt er liðið en skýringarnar og dagsetningu má sjá á myndunum. Dagsetningu og tímasetningu hvers korts má sjá í hægra horni (áááámmdd 00:00)”.
Translated:
“The quakes have different colors depending on the time passed, but description and dates can be seen on the pictures. Date and time for each map can be seen in the right bottom corner. (yyyymmdd 00:00”.
Eruption possibility increases. Iceland is on the Mid Atlantic ridge/tectonic divergent zone, and it has its own mantle hotspot. Kind of double whammy.
I see this going one of 4 ways:
(1) It stops, the system settles down and you get 50 to 100 years of smaller significant eruptions, 5 to 10 years apart.
(2) The system continues the rapid progressive horizontal WNW and ESE dilation until a cap rock gives out and an eruption breaks out as Iceland Met said, “with great force”, i.e. several kilometers of 4,000 to 5,000 ft high lava fountains slam on to giant ice sheet, periodically for several months.
(3) The rapidly increasing crustal pull-apart tension triggers a series sudden tectonic quakes that pull the multiple magma flooded rift fissures open, along an extended length. Decompression degassing pulverizes the magma to fine incandescent globules and they launch for where the shy is -55 degrees C where they shock-cool as tiny fine shards of glass that land on Brussels, Moscow and northern Japan.
(4) A strong magmatic quake opens Bardarbunga caldera and relieves the pressure explosively, from a single-point, before a tectonic quake sequence does. Given its 700 meters deep and will flood, and it’s a caldera, Krakatoa comes to mind.
—
1 human friendly option out of four.
The english volcano news web at the The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service RUV:
http://ruv.is/volcano
About RUV: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%9AV