From the Icelandic Met Office
It is believed that a small subglacial lava-eruption has begun under the Dyngjujökull glacier. The aviation color code for the Bárðarbunga volcano has been changed from orange to red. Image follows.
![volcano_status[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/volcano_status1.png?quality=75)
Webcam image showing either soil/dust being blown into the air by gas venting or ash being ejected.
Indeed, and look at the tremor, it is not shooting up abruptly, it is curving up, just steeply. That is different to all the other instances.
Hmmm a 2.5 shock at only 300 meter depth, we might get to see the show this morning!
Get this, Grimsvotn’s harmonic tremor just jumped up to 85% of its scale!
Plus a new biggest so far mag 3.7 in the base of the fissure.
I wish I knew exactly where in that video view was Bárðarbunga. There is a feature on the horizon that is either a cloud base lowering or steam/smoke coming off the ground near center frame, just about the same time we had a 3.0 shock at 1.1 km depth
Larry, I read a pilot’s comment today about taking air photos of that area and he said Bardarbunga is so big that he can’t capture it all in one photo image without a 24 mm lens. 🙂
All the seismic stations in Iceland are currently rattling with harmonic tremor, indication a large general pressure rise.
It will be an explosion.
http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/
A slow start, if this is the start of an eruption and this looks increasingly probable, might be a good sign. eruptions beneath ice get water mixed with the magma which turns the eruption more violent producing more ash. We still wait.
Have a look at the steady rise in quake sizes with each day.
http://volcanodiscovery.com/bardabunga-earthquakes.html
Big quake at the top of the San Francisco /Bay Area. It was a 6.0 with a shakemap rated at 9. That is likely the hidden top of the Hayward fault. I notice that some of my family members who live in Marin have all come online after being awakened by this. They live in Marin County some 20 miles away.
The Hayward fault is long overdue and can cause major damage in the East Bay of the SF/Bay Area. It was never known where the top of the fault was past the towns of Martinez and Benicia. I believe that they just found out where the top end lays.
24.8.2014 | 2:31 GMT Morgunblaðið:
>>>5.3 earthquake occurred in the Bárðarbunga<<<
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake occurred in the Bárðarbunga caldera at 5 km depth at 00:09 GMT. The Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) says it is the strongest event measured since the onset of the seismic crisis at Bárðarbunga.
The magnitude of the event is already confirmed by the European EMSC network and the GEOFON network of GFZ Potsdam in Germany.
No increased tremor has followed the earthquake.
http://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2014/08/24/5_3_earthquake_occurred_in_the_bardarbunga/
>>>5.3 magnitude quake – strongest yet<<<
This story, by the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (RUV), was updated on 24 August 2014, at 02;27 GMT.
A magnitude 5.3 earthquake occurred in the Bárðarbunga caldera at 5 km depth at 00:09 GMT Saturday. It is the strongest event measured since the onset of the seismic crisis at Bárðarbunga. No increased tremor has followed the earthquake. IMO continues to monitor the situation very closely.
The magnitude of the event is already confirmed by the European EMSC network and the GEOFON network of GFZ Potsdam in Germany.
The strongest earthquake yesterday was 4,6. That was the strongest earthquake since Thursday. The 5.3 earthquake is by far the strongest one measured in the current seismic crisis at Bárðarbunga.
As we reported earlier today Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, a professor of geophysics at University of Iceland, sees no signs of an eruption yesterday. A group of scientists surveyed the glacier yesterday from the air, aboard a surveillance plane from the Icelandic Coastguard. After the flight, Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson, professor of geophysics at University of Iceland, was interviewed at RUV. „The most likely scenario is that an eruption has not begun. This morning we saw a large increase in seismic activity and tremors, so it was perfectly rational to assume that an eruption had begun.
This story, by the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (RUV), was updated on 24 August 2014, at 02;27 GMT.
http://www.ruv.is/frett/53-magnitude-quake-strongest-yet
Updates in English will be posted at: ruv.is/volcano. Follow us on Twitter @ruvfrettir
New highest mag in fissure mag 4.2 at 11.6 km 99% quality
Agust Bjarnason says:
August 24, 2014 at 4:10 am
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My goodness, you sure have some tongue twisting words. I went to the page to see how to pronounce Dyngjujokull. My guess at the pronunciation was not even close.
Bardarbunga: Aviation alert downgraded | RÚV
http://www.ruv.is/frett/bardarbunga-aviation-alert-downgraded
Solid updates in English can be found here.
Fréttaknippi: Bárðarbunga in English – mbl.is
http://www.mbl.is/frettir/knippi/3305/
Watching these earthquakes is like listening to my kids in the back seat exchanging “did not”, “did too” fights during the 8 hour drive to the ranch when they were little. Drove me nuts. Just wanted to whack em!!!!
A squirt gun works, that is, until they get it away from you.
This is the graph from yesterday that seemed to indicate that an eruption had started at 12:00 GMT.
http://www.vedur.is/um-vi/frettir/bigimg/2962?ListID=0
Agust Bjarnason says:
August 24, 2014 at 7:51 am
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I wouldn’t mind seeing today’s plot when it’s done. It’s easy to see how this system has managed to produce such voluminous eruptions in the past.
The squirt gun thing would not have worked for me because we used those for shotgun seat competitions before the trip started. Once the four of us were locked and loaded we all piled into the car and belted in. Once the shooting commenced, the one that was least wet from the waist up when it was all over got to sit in the shotgun seat up front. However, a fly swatter was pretty good if the fight was overly long.
Hit this one with a squirty gun:
5 km SA Bárðarbungu mag 4.8 29 minutes ago Depth 4.6km Quality 99%
http://www.ruv.is/frett/bardarbunga-aviation-alert-downgraded
The surface graph clearly shows the intrusion of magma laterally away from the caldera, probably relieving a great deal of top pressure as a result. However, if pressure begins to build again you could still have a spectacular blow. For that to occur along the dyke fissure that is now being filled with magma, the pressure would have to be that much greater since there are no columns of magma underneath a lateral fissure when it blows up.
St. Helens lost a great deal of mountain side due to substantial fissures that had weakened that side of the mountain, so when it blew its top off, you ended up with a lopsided scar. Bardarbunga is not a mountain as much as it is a very large sloping hill, but it still makes a great topic.
In the usual case an eruption almost always finds it easier travel up and erupt pimple-like. And that’s mostly how it is and has been in Iceland since about 1875. It’s how it was with Gjlap in 1996, and Grimsvotn in 2011.
But this time the terrain is playing its joker card. It is a geologically ‘fast’-spreading rift center, and it’s currently actively extending the crust (with ease) as the magma rises, so there is no pimple. The crust is accommodating the intrusion and it’s proving to be surprisingly riddled with old cavities, chambers and fissure conduits.
So it’s easier to travel horizontally and fill with magma, and according the IMO this is an enormous magma plume. It itself is what’s forcing the crust to open for it.
So no pimples, just stretch marks. This system is finally demonstrating the very mechanism that allowed this volcano to product the largest known lava flow in 10,000 yrs, which was a mere 21 km cubed.
So it would be a mistake to think this will just be another pimple somewhere. It still can be, or else a series of them over time.
But it can also become a deep, long profusely emitting gash, right through the crust, which bleeds out for six months, or much more.
It is doing the very thing that can potentially produce that. The dike/fissure network magma that is opening is now headed in the direction of another huge caldera what vulcanologist in 2010 reported was getting set for another eruptive phase.
This could be a part of the same plume, because we now have a few distinct sites of separate but clearly connected magma intrusions, through the whole crustal depth, that are overall around 50 km apart, but interacting.
The more it does this the more dangerous it becomes. The caldera it is now building in the direction of erupted in 1875 and that eruption lead to a mass exodus of people from Iceland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Askja
I presume also that the longer it continues to extrude magma out into the near surface fissures the more hot magma rising up the path to the surface will re-melt and open up the throat of the volcano so that once the plug pops and major flow begins the path to the surface will get progressively easier to traverse and peak flow potential will increase the longer this behavior continues.
Probably a duplicate link posting. The comments section seems to be the most up to date info I could find.
Tom
oops.
http://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/bardabunga-eruption-has-started-maybe-not/
I must have put an extra spoonful of D umb a ** in my coffee this AM>