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From vedur.is

Map of earthquakes over the last 48 hours in Iceland.

More like this

Ruh-roh. Katla is rumbling a bit. Historically, Katla tends to erupt 1-2 years after any eruption in Eyjafjallajökull. Katla eruptions are also, historically, very nasty, very dangerous and likely to have wide (continental scale) impacts. But not always. Katla is the primary motivator for Iceland'…
here we go again... this is the map of earthquakes in the last 24 hours in Iceland, kinda lit up there - nice illustration of the mid-atlantic ridge coming up from the south and south-west and bisecting the island so that little cluster under Vatnajökull, that is Grímsvötn Grímsvötn is a sub-…
Mystery flashflood reveals new hydrothermal system and probable small subglacial eruption this week, or two, or three... Who the f#@k named a volcano Loki anyway... The other night there were some gentle rumblings on the west side of Vatnajökull Literally: small earthquakes and low frequency…
Series of substantial earthquakes in the Katla caldera, could be nothing could be sign of an impending eruption there are multiple, relatively shallow earthquakes taking place now, several with magnitude of 3+ earthquake map at 4:10 am (from vedur.is) it is dark, no other evidence yet, eg no…

I had to go to the link to find out that the color coding is according to elapsed time since the earthquake was recorded, rather than the magnitude of the quake.

I don't know enough Icelandic to understand the Y axis on the lower plot at that link. It doesn't look like Richter magnitude (3 is quite mild, and none of these earthquakes even rates a 3 on whatever scale they are using). What are they plotting there?

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 11 May 2012 #permalink

It's a badly drawn left turn arrow for alien space craft.

The clump of points on the south coast is Katla - not abnormal activity, though there was apparently a small glacial flood there last month or so.
The line is one of the main branches of the mid-Atlantic rift, there is another branch angling more south towards Katla.
The spread off the north coast is a rift zone.

Never seen the ridge light up like that.

Re Eric Lund @1

The y-axis is indeed magnitude, but using the more up-to-date Moment Magnitude scale rather than richter. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale

I very much enjoyed the coverage at Erik Klemetti's blog of the eyjafjallajokull thingy a while back, and this site (well, the english version http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/) was were most of the data under discussion was from.