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.
Tim
August 24, 2014 at 7:08 pm
The maps suggest that the dyke is still forcing its way north, we could do with Bárðarbunga blowing and relieving some of the pressure.
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It coming from vertically below at this point, note the complete lack of feeder quakes linking Bardarbunga to the current dike swarm. Note also the frenetic activity under the dike swarm to depth. If the other end blew I doubt it would change much. This looks like crustal extension controlled on intrusion (look at the CGPS, it’s dilating very easily, no mag 6 and mag 7s to make it dilate). Plus a very large hot melt is siting right under the whole area, and or this is pressure drop at depth melting – not pressure controlled injection from somewhere else horizontally.
I have been looking at Google maps for the surface location of the column of Quakes on the right side of the 3D graph. http://baering.github.io/ That area has no ice on top of it, and looks like a ridge sliding out of a butt crack in the Northern edge of the ice field at Lat 64.850 Long -16.850 being out in the middle of an area with a lot of surface cracks that look like uplift/separation features can be seen at 100 ft scale if you wait for it to load at that resolution.
https://www.google.com/maps/@64.8352026,-16.8459562,7078m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
There is a strong accelerating extension of the crust, WSW at DYNC, and ESE at GSIG, within the past 24 hours. Easily the strongest extension of the crust so far and between 3 and 4 times faster than the previous impressive rates.
They show the combines extension between the sites equates in the last three, months is 40 cm opening of the crust, mostly within the past week. Around 10 cm of that has occurred in the past 24 hours.
The fissure/dike swarming is directly between them and their net vectors indicate that the northern most end of the current through-crustal magma surge, continues to hinge open the northern end. Given that situation continued relatively rapid, approximate north to NNE dike propagation to continue during today.
This nailed the situation:
“… First let me write one thing, and that is that we are not in Kansas anymore. And with that I mean that we are in totally uncharted country. … What is happening now is really like if you walked down a familiar street and turn a corner and find yourself in the fabled Land of Oz …
… A rifting fissure eruption is when a large part of the fissure swarm “rifts”. Rifting is when a large part of a fissure on Iceland opens up all the way down to the mantle and as that happens a large scale decompression melt starts in the mantle and obscene amounts of magma is formed and pushed upwards filling the void that is created as the tectonic plates move apart.
Bárðarbunga has had more than half of the Icelandic rifting fissure eruptions, and of course the largest. Last time that happened to Bárðarbunga was in 1477 when a fissure opened up at Veidðivötn that extended all the way down to Torfajökull (causing an eruption there) and it also caused a VEI-6 caldera event at Bárðarbunga central volcano. The next time it happened was at the 1783 Skaftár Fires (Lakí) that happened on the Grimsvötn fissure swarm. …”
http://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2014/08/24/bardarbunga-nature-of-the-beast/
There has been a shift in wind movements today. There is a large rotation centered off of Ireland to the west. That has influenced shifts in the wind pattern. It also may have contributed to shifts in the Gulf Stream, which looks like it has dropped south of where it normally runs. Lots of change in the air…http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-9.11,47.84,497
Also worldwide quakes had moderated a bit on the last several days, and then there were two big bangs today. The quake rate is still dropping despite the California 6.0 quake which contributed 6 events to the total for the day. This lower rate should continue through to Tuesday before picking back up. Maybe there will be one main event tomorrow or Tuesday.
Difference from 23rd to 24th August NNE propagation quake trace.
http://i1049.photobucket.com/albums/s396/gogglezon/Aug23rd24th2014Bardabungaswarm_zps19382e2a.jpg
New quake surge is starting since 2:00 PM Iceland time, harmonic is going back up and Mag 2.5s firing of again.
Had a 5.1 shock a little over an hour ago near the main caldera, followed shortly after by several 2+ shocks, so the show is not over.
Looks like rifting is continuing, and there is still potential for development. Unfortunately volcanoes have little understanding of news cycles and human attention spans and it will do what it does when it is ready to do it.
I suspect that long slow development of the fracture complex means there is more potential now than if it had popped at the first opportunity 2 days ago.
http://baering.github.io
still shows a lot of relatively shallow activity so it is not far below the surface, but appears to be easier to extrude into the existing fracture systems and expand it than to pop the top cap. That also means that there is now a large volume of magma just below the surface which could be available for eruption if this thing ever vents and depressurizes the lava so trapped gasses can expand.
Only time will tell on this.
@Unmentionable 8/25 3:48 am
A rifting fissure eruption is when a large part of the fissure swarm “rifts”.
Yes, it looks to me like the system is unzipping a tectonic rift along a 50+ mile system. The NNW earthquake swarm is at all depths. That makes it a couple times longer than depth to mantle.
Not only do I think it will erupt, I think it will erupt for weeks, maybe months. Could it be Iceland’s Kilauea?
@ur momisugly unmentionable…today,s 24 hour quake count is currently at 28, yesterday was around 38 while prior to that it had been in the low 40s. Watching this regular pattern of change over the last 3+ years is where I drew my conclusion about moon phases and earthquakes. All in all, since I first started paying attention in February of 2011 I would say that the average quake numbers per 24 hour period have trended upwards in that time. When I was first watching, the low numbers would come in around 18 per 24 hour period while the higher count would be around 30. Average was around 24 events per 24 hour period. The only exceptions to that would be when a large quake generated multiple aftershocks, with a very high count for some short period of time. Over the last year+ the high counts regularly hit into the 40+ events per 24 hour period. What has driven the increase in the average number of quakes? I draw these numbers from watching the USGS 2.5 or greater map, which only shows 4.0+ for quakes outside of the US.
Correction to my 11:46am
The
NNWNNE earthquake swarmI’ve been looking at a series of images
from http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/vatnajokull/
The vast majority of the Mag 3+ quakes are on the NNE trending “zipper”. They have moved 10 km NNE toward ASKJA in just the past 40 hrs.
Askja eruption next weekend if it keeps progressing northward! my uninformed prediction anyway.
A 5.7 struck 90 minutes ago. That is the biggest yet.
That is odd. The USGS is saying 5.7 while the EMSC has this last quake listed as a 5.0. I have never seen such a large discrepancy between the two.
The flow through the magma network and into the caldera will get enhanced dramatically starting Wednesday into the weekend as tidal forces ramp up.
The nearest marine tide charts are for Hofn about 110 km to the SSE of B-bunga. The tidal forces are shifted to about 75 minutes later at B-bunga.
http://www.windfinder.com/tide/hornafjordur_airport_hofn
That has been confirmed as a 5.7, and that’s bigger than the quake that triggered Gjlap, But this volcano has a hard head it seems.
But every new seismic tremor pulse the quake in the caldera gets a lot more powerful. And some of the older quake levels have been upgraded as well, an earlier 5.0 was taken up to 5.3.
As predicted yesterday, on the trend that the quakes would be significantly bigger today and they are.
Bardarbunga Caldera Mag 5.7 at 6 km depth
Fissure swarm Mag 4.6 at mid depth
30 km deep mag 3.3 west of Bardarbunga
Thank you for your regular updates.
No problem RAC, it’s a bit of fun and I have time at the moment. 🙂
I noticed there was a 3.3 quake that is much deeper than the others at 30.1km. Is this meaningful in the big picture, or something that’s expected?
There has been a nice revision to
http://baering.github.io/
The 3D plot is bigger, but the N-S aspect is squashed compared to E-W.
But below left of the 3D plot is a Map view.
It is an impressive web application done on short notice.
Looks like activity at Askja is increasing, dyke is still pushing northwards.
In the last 30 minutes have had two almost simultaneous 5.2 quakes at different depths 12.9 km and 1.4 km followed by two 11 different shocks > 2.0 in the following 30 minutes. The rifting might have run into a hard spot and cannot continue along its previous path. There was also a 5.3 shock about 3 hours ago.
Might be changing its behavior.
There are two 5+ quakes in the last 3 hours. They are sizing up. The world wide quake rate is still low.
4x 5+ quakes the past day….
This is getting interesting again!!!!
Looks as though the dyke is making a push for Askja some larger quakes happening there now! Bárðarbunga is still seeing some significant quakes but can’t help but feel that these are just from week zones in the Volcano caused by stress of the parting of the rift further north. If the dyke there manages to break through at Aska it could happen very violently, with around 1 cubic km of water in the lake it has the potential to make one hell of a bang.
Many thanks to Baering for this github page makes for very interesting watch as the situation evolves, just glad I’m very far away from it!
http://baering.github.io