Monday Musings: Kilauea, Pacaya, Eyjafjallajökull and more!

Thanks for the Kawah Ijen - Link. I was there one and a half year ago. Absolutely impressive. But it is a hard trip on bad roads even with four while drive, until you reach the Ijen Plateau. BTW: There is also a volcano called Merapi there, but it is not the active and dangerous one close to Yogyakarta (some news mix this up on maps), it is the 2799 high point of the Ijen complex.

Erik: I always have to take photos like those on Pacaya with a pinch of salt, since the foreshortening effect of telephoto lenses can sometimes make people seem far closer to the danger zone than they actually are. On the Trombley story: what's the betting his information sources include this blog, the Volcanism Blog, and John Seach's site?

Thomas: 'Merapi' I think, means 'fire' or 'fiery red' in Indonesian; which suggests to me that it has erupted since human settlement of the area (although not historically active). Life expectancy of the 'miners' -quarrymen, perhaps more accurate- must be appallingly short, given the working conditions

Thanks for posting the link about Trombley. We have to be aware of the amount of information circulating on the internet that lack any scientific basis. On previous threads we have already been alerted about misleading links that we have unawarely posted, eager to provide useful information for us volcanophiles. Keep us updated on this, please.

Erik,
The Kajah Iwen mine is impressive, but it is negligible in the scheme of world sulfur production. Most sulfur is not mined by hand. It is generally an industrial byproduct, e.g. from sulphide ore smelting.

@Lab, #4: A lot of sulphur comes from the raffineries of the oil industry.

Hi to all,

Is that a steam plume coming from the lake on the Thoro cam ??

I swear that there was some type of plume coming from the right "bank" in front of the lake, but its dissapated now.Very strange.

@ Adrian, I saw it too. Looked like quite a big puff of steam lasted a few minutes then slowly disappeared. Maybe it was an escape of hot water coming off the glacier?

Have a look at mula cam, it's the first time I've seen any definition in the terrain on the mt. sides. there - but I think it's all blowing dust, might be what was seen on Thoro, too...or mist rising?

Hi Marginata, thanks for that, at least I am not seeing things ! Steam seems to be coming from melt-water now and other locations.This has happened before though.

According to news reports, there is a small eruption going on in Eyjafjallajökull at the moment. This eruptions are not big, and often drop down to nothing.

Hi Jon,

thanks for the updated information. I.M.O. do not seem to be putting their updates out in English,as i think someone has already commented on,and my Icelandic is very poor.

I see what you are looking at, and think that the location is wrong to be steam, although it does appear whiter than the dust/ash blowing along the valley floor. My view is that it is dust being blown up the lateral moraine outside wall, and mixing with dust/ ash being pulled from inside wall by vortex from wind blowing over top.

I totally concur with you there Gordon, a fresh mind and a fresh pair of eyes are a great help !

Good morning, afternoon, evening, night (MAEN) all.

bigbenber blog has some cool pictures of Tuguruhua blowing smoke rings:

http://bigbenber.over-blog.com/article-rond-de-fumee-et-explosions-stro…

The blog points to a site where one can see the pictures in larger format:

http bigbenber.over-blog.com/album-1581553.html

Good evening all!

Is it just me, or did something started with the 1.4M earthquake below Katla? After the quake the tremors increased a bit on the HVO, ESK & GOD stations but not on the HAU & MID stations. The largest increase is in the HVO station.
Also the Snaebyli station registered increase in tremors.
Note that the Snaebyli and HVO stations are on the other side of Katla from Eyja. During the Eyja eruption HAU & MID registered as much tremors or more than HVO, ESK & GOD.

If my logics are not out the window completely I would say that this is not related to Eyjafjallajökull as such, and that it instead is belonging to Katla.

Please note that I am not saying that Katla is about to erupt, but that it is perhaps showing some slight unrest and that unrest might be a sign of future likelyhood of a Katla eruption... Hedging here;) But if...

The US will gladly give away it's excess sulfur supply; the entire annual production yield is a byproduct of waste-stream desulfurization. The question of what to do with the excess is unique among industrial minerals natural abundance, whereby the majority are in rapid decline.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2002/of02-298/

I should also have written that Jóns eminent helicorder is also picking up the tremors from Katla starting roughly at the same time as HVO, ESK & GOD.

The tremors registered at HVO, ESK, GOD & Snaebyli is mainly in the slow 0.5 to 1 herz region, whereas Eyja seemed to rock´n´roll at the faster 2 - 4 herz.

@Carl, Please check the wind noise before you over estimate the tremor noise from the volcano. At the moment there nothing on my sensors but wind noise.

Given that my sensor is at distance of ~40 km. The tremor from Eyjafjallajökull also need to appear on Haukadalur (hau) IMO station before I start to see them on my station at the same time.

Mulakot webcam clearly shows deposited ash re-entrainment from convection winds in the valley. Has been an ongoing issue for visibility/environmental health for area residents.

Back to sulfur production.

USGS has an interesting read, in the 2007 annual report, of somewhat unusual global market and production conditions (under minerals yearbook) that year.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/sulfur/

According to that report, the US is the number one producer and one half of all produced sulfur is used as a fertilizer amendment, often in the form of ammonium sulfate; major nation consumers are China and India. The rest contributes to industrial chemical demand, sulfur being one of the most important industrial chemicals in use (production graphics simply tower over all other chemicals in comparison).

Here in the Columbia Basin, over-application of ammonium sulfate in the past may have contributed to the dissolution of a thick layer of caliche hardpan in the shallow subsurface, according to a astute soil scientist with whom I worked for several years. In fact, on sampling field trips, we got side-tracked more than a few times checking out erosion slopes and road cuts, or hand-auguring soil cores to test his hypothesis.

We think that it's changed the historic rate of subsurface percolation (from the start of large irrigation projects more than 50 yrs ago). The NRCS won't say much on this issue, unfortunately.

Hello Jón!

Thank you for the correction, seem to have misplaced your helicorder there:)
Had a problem finding the wind direction in that region of Iceland. Now that I have checked on the enormous wind-direction tool at Hvolsvelli (the free-swinging building-crane...) I now know that it is blowing from WSW.
And from the camera pictures there seems to be wind also around the silent HAU and MID, effectively ruling out wind as a probable source of the tremors.

Katla EQ http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/myrdalsjokull/…

Date Time Latitude Longitude Depth Magnitude Quality Location
Monday
07.06.2010 12:55:03 63.629 -19.623 1.1 km 0.5 99.0 8.8 km SW of Básar

small uptick in tremors again

Interesting with 3 quakes so close to Katlas eastern caldera rim. I would really like to see up-to-date GPS figures for Katla right now.
Three rather small quakes, a little bit of tremor. If I remember correctly Katla is one of those rather pesky volcanoes that doesn't do a lot before it goes into high gear.
It would have been so nice to see if there has been any surface movement the last few days, ie. if there has been new magma coming up. GPS me:)

Mulakot cam some-what clearer

Update on activity
Eruption in Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland
Assessment 7 June 2010 14:40

Some eruptive activity is still in the western side of the crater. Magma explosions occur off and on producing ash, which falls near the crater. This explosive activity is accompanied by an abrupt increase in tremor. White steam clouds have reached a height of 6 km following these explosions. We continue to monitor the volcano closely.

In the western part of the crater, a new crater has formed at the site of explosive activity. Tremor pulses late 6 June accompanied steam plumes from this new crater. The plumes and explosions are small. Caving in of lava in the conduit can be heard between explosions. Only a part of the new active crater has been seen due to the steam. The glacial ice at the top is advancing rapidly to the GÃgjökull otulet glacier.

In the afternoon of 4 June an increase in seismic tremor was recorded at seismic stations around the volcano, but decreased again in the evening. Small pulses of tremor were recorded off and on during the night. At around 0900h on 5 June the tremor reached a maximum before decreasing again. An increase was recorded late 6 June for a short time and small pulses were recorded last night. The tremor has been predominantly at high frequencies. A few small, shallow earthquakes have been recorded beneath the top crater in the last few days.

Details in a status report issued collectively by the Icelandic Meteorological Office and the Institute of Earth Sciences today at 11:00. See also status report from 12:00 4 June.

A couple comments before heading off to see the Red Sox in Cleveland:

@4 - Yeah, I am biased towards thinking of mining sulfur rather than producing it as a byproduct probably because I did my PhD work on a volcano what was also a sulfur mine (Aucanquilcha).

@2 - I agree, telephotos can make lots of perspective go out the window, but dang, still impressive.

@ the Katla EQ folks - one thing to watch out for are specifically shallow earthquakes (2 of the 3 recorded in the past 24 hours are less than 2 km deep) along the caldera edges. Calderas have faults along the rims, so you might expect to find earthquakes along these ring faults periodically, especially with an icecap on top of the volcano. Although its not entirely the same, you can look at general caldera structure here: http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/2010/02/the_structure_of_calderas.php. So, I'd be surprised if anything seismicity under Katla is magma-related right now.

Those dust devils on the Mulakot cam are quite something

Tourists and erupting volcanoes.
Here a nice picture from Etna:

http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/etna/etna04/etna0611-en.html?id=9

Totally agree with Erik on the shallow caldera earthquake origin likely to be icecap stress related.

Mined sulfur is in the minority as global sulfur source.

Significant dust devil activity on the Mulakot webcam, with a very large one visible right now. Webcam refresh rate appears to have been reduced.

From the IMO/IES report quoted earlier,

>In the western part of the crater, a new crater has formed at the site of explosive activity.

A satellite image would be useful.

Looking at the thoro cam, the wind is really blowing. It must be painful to be outside today from the face-stinging of the clasts.

Erik...

I think you are to happy with the Red Sox:)

None of the quakes where really shallow and two where deep, the first was 1.1M at 3.8KM (the shallowest), the second was 0.9M at 11.6KM and the third was 1.4M at 9.9KM.
So, I would guess that at least the second and third are unrelated to caldera fracturing.

Thank you for the link, it was nice!

Can someone tell me what the white cracks are in the webcam from Halema'uma'u http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/HMcam/

??

@35 Snotra viking. On that cam, you are looking at a lava lake with crusting. The white cracks are where the crust is broken up. Watch long enough and you will see the crusts fall back into the lake and new crusts form. It's fascinating to watch. :-)

(with apologies to our Danish friends)..

"Something is rotten in Denmark".

Airlines to be profitable this year, Iata says
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10253051.stm

From the BBC news article posted today:

Airlines worldwide will make profits of $2.5bn (£1.7bn) in 2010, an industry body has said. The prediction marks a huge upturn from the last forecast of the International Air Transport Association (Iata). In March, the airline association had predicted global losses for airline businesses of $2.8bn.

"The global economy is recovering... much more quickly than could have been anticipated," said Iata director Giovanni Bisignani. "We thought that it would take at least three years to recover the $81 billion (14.3%) drop in revenues in 2009," he added. "But the $62bn top-line improvement this year puts us about 75% on the way to pre-crisis levels."

--------
And that profit is despite a downwardly revised loss of $2.2 billion within the European airlines industry.\\

Well worth a look for anyone interested in Science. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9 Podcasts available to download and view again on the i player.

The tremor plot isn't refreshing for a while now?? http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html

Thanks, Parclair, last time I looked it was just a hazy blur, so I didn´t know what to expect. I will have a longer look next time. Now it´s hazy again.

#39 AFAICS, the plot is up to date; it IS getting crowded, though, as now one tick on X is 24 hours. Still, that plot is much better in putting things in perspective, as every tiny jump does not generate huge excitement, as does the short-time plot with its ever-changing amplitude scale.

There's a really nice cloudscape at Turrialba right now. Looks like a healthy steam billow as well from the crater, though it might just be clouds forming.
http://www.ovsicori.una.ac.cr/videoturri.html

Umm... okay, a plot for the Kat scratch fever. June Quakes to date, cross section looking North - Eyj to Kat.

http://i45.tinypic.com/z7dat.png

Tungurahua shows intense activity and generates huge explosions
www.hoy.com.ec - 07/Junio/2010 | 14:23
The Tungurahua volcano today generated a loud explosion, throwing ash, gas and rocks, leading to the possibility of raising the danger alert in areas of risk, officials said.
"There was a dry blast, gunfires were heard, some very strong. Fortunately, the explosion was not followed by the sounds associated with emission of incandescent volcanic material," said Gorki Ruiz, the Geophysical Institute (IG).
He added that, within the mountain, 135 km south of Quito, a lava lake is forming, which may cause flows to go down the northwest flank, where several villages are located.
The Emergency Operations Center (COE) in the province of Chimborazo shall meet "in order to analyze the possibility to change the alert level from yellow to orange for high-risk sectors, if the increase in the eruptive process persists", said turn National Secretariat of Risk (SNR).

@Lurking, do you believe the pattern we see "loosely" under Katla is representing the magma conduit up to the surface? It does look a bit like that compared to the dots under Eyja, at least I think so. What can be interpreted from these plots, is it anything like a "earth map"?

@43 Hi lurking,

16 or 17 under Eyja, 4 under Katla and 4 between.And we are only on the 7th of June.

I wonder what the full tally for May was like ?

Not at home, so only a short post - an Icel./Eng. micro-dictionary, right off the top of my head (assisted by the 'pedia and the Science Web (visindavefurinn.is)):

Aska, ösku - ash
Brennistein(n) - sulphur
BrennisteinstvÃildi - sulphur dioxide
Eldgos, gos - eruption(s)
Eldgosið, gosið - the eruption
Eldgosin, gosin - the eruptions
GervigÃgur - pseudocrater
GÃg(ur) - crater
GÃga(r) - craters
Gjall - scoria
Gjóska, gjósku - tephra
Gosórói, gosóróa - volcanic tremor; tremor b/c of eruption
Hraun - lava
::apalhraun - a'a' lava
::helluhraun - pahoehoe lava
Hraungos - effusive eruption
Hraunkleprar - lava splatters
Hraunkúla - lava bomb
Hraunkúlur - lava bombs
(Hraun)kvika, -kviku - magma
(Hraun)kvikan, -kvikuna - the magma
Ildi - oxygen, oxide
Jarðfræðing(s|ur) - geologist
Jarðfræðinga(r) - geologists
Jarðskjálftar, skjálftar - earthquakes, quakes
Jarðskjálfti, skjálfti - earthquake, quake
JarðvÃsindamaður - geoscientist (literal translation)
JarðvÃsindamenn - geoscientists (literal translation)
Kolefni - carbon
Kolvetni - hydrocarbons, carbohydrates
Köfnunarefni, nitur - nitrogen
LÃparÃt - rhyolite
Lofttegund - gas (lit.trans. is 'air type')
Lofttegundir - gases
Móberg - tuff
Ãrói, óróa - tremor
Sprengigos - explosive eruption (incl. phreatic)
Stuðlaberg - columnar basalt
Súrefni - oxygen
Tefra - tephra
Vatn - water, lake
Vetni - hydrogen
Vikur - pumice
Ãeytigos - plinian eruption
Ãyrla, þyrlu - helicopter
Ãskufall - ash fall

Unlike English, the article is suffixed, and may vary with plurality, case, gender and the goose chase factor.

(So much for a short post...)

Pity in a way that sulphur is now mostly derived from non-volcanic sources; someone should write a book on the history of humanity's ideas over the years for collecting it from active or potentially active volcanoes. Schemes either hair-raising (Popocatepetl, Vulcano, White Island), hare-brained (Mt Adams, Davidof) or plain strange (Masaya: putting funnels over crater fumaroles and piping the gas down to a chemical plant at the foot of the volcano) Any offers?
(only joking)

@43: Now you've got the picture! This is what Haroldur was referring to in his blog, what...10 days or so ago!

Fissure extensions as probable sources of magma intrusion that might be feeding Eyjaf. Maybe Katla later on, once the pressure gains enough 'umph' to overcome what we might call 'closure kinetics' (very large force-moment couple acting horizontally and in opposition to vertical pressure on the relict MAR fissure system).

Go on, put back the approximate locations of Eyajaf and Katla on your graphic...

We need you to also mark the location of Godabunga.

Pretty please.

Thanks, Reynir. We've been needing that geology term translation help for ages.

The sulfur mining story is even scarier considering raw sulfur is basically a waste product in the US because desulfurization efforts in the oil/gas industry have swamped demand.

@Adrian,Dorset, UK [46]

May? The whole month? NP. Roughly the same layout as the June plot, but greater depths.

http://i47.tinypic.com/jgnqjs.png

@snotra viking, sweden [45]

I can't really hazard an authoritative guess. Passerby. Jón FrÃmann, Erik Klemetti (and others) are far more qualified to make a supposition about what's going on down there. All I really do is play with the dots and read what I can find. I have seen texts indicating that there is some sort of connection to Katla, and there is an odd diagonal alignment of sparse quakes that trend toward Katla's crater... but that's about all I can say.

FYI, when I'm not fiddling with the Quakes in Iceland, I'm juggling benzene concentration estimates for the Oil Geyser southwest of here... mostly it passes the time while I stare at BP's Oil-Cam bot.

#50: I have been intending to do this for a while. I just had a reminder upthread.

@Passerby [49]

Okay.. Jun plot pulled out wider. Latitude depth is 63.3 to 64.75 in order to get both volcanoes and the area between. View is to the North.

http://i46.tinypic.com/2qsze5t.png

For those how missed my comment on the Eyjafjallajökull blog post. IMO has posted new information on what is going on in Eyjajallajökull.

http://en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/articles/nr/1884

Passerby, I misread your post.

I need a good lat and lon for Godabunga station in order to get it on the plot or else I'll have to eyeball it. The ISGPS gives me one of those "Page not found" results when I try to get the station specifics. I do have it stuffed away in a pdf somewhere in the directory, but I haven't indexed it so I'm not sure which one it's in.

In the meantime, on the June and May plots, Eyj is on the left, Katla is on the right.

@52 Lurking,

Brilliant stuff,please keep it coming as needed !

@49 Hi Passerby.I also remember Haroldhurs post and totally agree with your observations. The previously tenuous link between Eyja and Katla may not be so tenuous after all. I know this is pure conjecture but nevertheless....

@47 Hi Reynir,

Thank you so much for the translations:makes things a little clearer !!

@ Passerby

Okay.. I found the reference.

The position given is -19.32236 63.65976 god 2006 July 25 from "Seismic Signs of Magma Pathways through the Crust in the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, South Iceland" by Sigurlaug Hjaltadóttir, KristÃn S. Vogfjörð, Ragnar Slunga.

I used a vertical line since I don't have the altitude.

http://i46.tinypic.com/kf021k.png

#58 @Lurking: You are amazing, thank you very much, indeed!

Ah nice, Lurking, no surprises. Your previous graph helped underscore tectonic setting and magmetic chemical difference in the rift-ridge systems of the central hotspot EVZ (Grimsvotn and Bardarbunga, etc) and the interplate-boundary zone (that includes Hekla, Eyjaf and Katla).

Two different animals (crustal thickness, underlying relict crust and major acting forces at each volcanic center).

Haraldur is a smart cookie. He had his kid throw everything but the kitchen sink into last years masters thesis. Insightful.

Lurking...Didn't you plot May's EQ data in the same way? Not the cube, but a flat representation? Want to know if it has the same interesting pattern over depth.

@ Passerby [61]

Yes I did. Here's the link again.

i47.tinypic.com/jgnqjs.png

And, since you're on a roll, here are a couple more that I tried my best to get into the same boundaries (Latitude and Longitude). Do mind the depths, they probably won't match the colors in the other plots.

2007 all quakes

i46.tinypic.com/ixzafq.png

2008 all quakes

i50.tinypic.com/6h3rx5.png

I don't have 2009 data, I had to disassemble the Google Earth KMZ files from hraun.vedur.is/ja/google/index_en.html to get these. The 2009 set had no data.

(note: http stripped to dodge the spam filters)

Haven't had a chance to get on much, but I wanted to thank Lurking for the great visuals. Very informative and helpful.

Long Valley is going bump again today. A 3.2 and a 3.0 followed by a small flurry of smaller quakes all in the past hour or so.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Maps/special/Long_Va…

This one is more of a look at what sizes of quakes occur where in Iceland. The data is from SIL ( hraun.vedur.is/ja/ymislegt/storskjalf.html )

Of note is that the area north of Katla and Eyjafjallajökull is capable of some pretty nasty ground movement. This probably explains (in part) why Hekla, Katla and friends are so active over the historical record.

Color indicates magnitude.

http://i49.tinypic.com/8yrgv7.png

@ Jen [64]

And again it seems as if there are two separate quake stacks in Long Valley.

From a previous article I saw that the Northern group of quakes is next to a fault that may or may not be next to a possible magma area. This batch looks to be in the same area. I don't know what it is, but here is the spatial arrangement of the quakes.

http://i46.tinypic.com/t8xbis.png

Whoah... I botched that one. Ignore the pic, one axis is backwards.

Use this graphic, same discussion.

http://i45.tinypic.com/1o14bd.png

I have a question for those watching Turrialba, with time to answer: I suppose the night view is a thermal cam like the FLIR cam at Mila. How about the glow? Is it from hot steam or is it lava? The plume was bigger today and the night view looks pretty impressive.
http://www.ovsicori.una.ac.cr/videoturri.html

Lurking: actually I think this particular stack of quakes is to the south of the ones that were going on two weeks ago (those were north of the caldera) this one is within the caldera boundary in the Mammoth Lakes region. Unless you meant the same area more broadly.

@40 Snotra, I believe you are in Europe? Try looking at the 2 Hawaii lava lake cams when you get up in the morning.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hvo/cams/

The lava lakes (H from overlook and the P cam) are best seen during the Hawaiian night. During the days, vog tends to get in the way of viewing so I look at the H from HVO and TEB from P. (I'm writing this at 3:00 UTC. I estimate that Hawaii will be dark in about 4 hours.)

@43 Lurking. Wonderful plot. Thank you. I'm going to start watching the webcams again. ;-)

@47 Reynir Thank you for the quick dictionary. Rah!

@68 Renato thanks for the heads up on Turrialba. I think it's a regular camera, what we're seeing in the "white" areas are the eruption itself. I've not really looked at it today. Is there a city off to the right? The whitish dots on the right could be city lites or lava. (I'm leaning to lava).

To everyone, I really appreciate the cam watchers. I can only have 3 windows open for cams without crashing my system, so alerts are great. I promise to alert whenever I see anything. Whoohooo!

Heh. As my system was grinding out my previous post, I went to Salon.com to get the latest off the wire. Salon staff wrote:

Complete with the fools on the hill.

Diane, NoCal. I've decided. I like the new USGS California Quake Maps. As one zooms into the quake area, the faults are named! Way cool;-)

For those who might be interested, here's the California/Nevada Map, click on the area you're interested in, until you reach the info about the quake. Roll your cursor over the fault line, and the name will appear.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/

#68 @Dan - Dan, Oil Beach Florida (???) - Come on! Switch this your nick. I'd pick Dan, Florida Margueritas, instead! :)
I've been following the devastating news on the oil spill. Hope you guys be courageous, this is going to be a long journey to recovery.
#70 @Parclair: Thank you for your kind response! It's reassuring for us, lurkers, to have support from others. I'll keep on posting my observations - have a good RAM here. :)
As I've already said before - this blog is terribly addictive!
THE BEST!!!!

OOOPS I managed to cancel out the salon quote with my ignorance of HTML tags-- the quote is:

After a May 27 explosion -- which killed a reporter who drew too near to it -- Guatemala's Pacaya volcano is drawing thousands of tourists to see its fiery rivers sloping down the mountain. Reports say that local guides are seizing the opportunity, and for as little as $1.25 a head, taking the awed out-of-towners around the closed Pacaya National Park and through a private park to get a firsthand view of the action. All of which has officials freaked out. Said the country's emergency response spokesman: "This is dangerous."

Sorry for the babbling. I'll be quiet now. ;-p

Regarding Turrialba, the lights in the distance are city lights, not lava, and the glow on the steam cloud is reflected glow from an incandescent vent. I was at Turrialba recently and it was putting out an impressively large gas plume.

@75 Mike-- To me, it appears that there are splatters that could be strombolian in nature. I agree that there's lots of reflection going on, but every so often there are distinct bright little lites in the glow.

Thanks for the heads up on the city lites. Looks like watching Los Angeles CA from the top of a hill. ;-)

#74 #75 #76 Thanks for the posts. I tend to agree with the reflected glow hypothesis but it's also noticeable that this eruption has intensified since yesterday, so I wouldn't rule out that what we are seeing is the real thing.
@ mike lyvers I envy you for the opportunity to watch this volcano from close, but I'm not sure that I would be bold enough to get as close as those people are doing in Guatemala. No way!
BTW: EQ Under Eyjaf: Tuesday
08.06.2010/02:53:22/63.609/-19.494/4.5 km/0.8/30.18/7.6 km S of Básar

Sometimes I get the impression that EQs come all in a bunch over Island. It was quiet, and then, suddenly, little red circles showing all over the place. You can actually SEE rifting through the country, I daresay.

@73 Renato
Sounds like a plan. :)

#79 LOL!!! :)
Dan, whenever you come to Rio I'll introduce you to our famous "caipirinhas" and I'll show you different versions of "Manhã de Carnaval".
I warrant you I didn't drink any, but still, I can see the "floating city over Turrialba" and "the live rifting across Iceland". :)

Ok, fellows, enough for today.
Hope I'll find time to do some more lurking tomorrow! G'Night/morning!

@Jen [69]

Bit of both actually...

Profile view looking East, May and Jun on same plot

http://i45.tinypic.com/24edzle.png

Same set, perspective view looking North.

http://i46.tinypic.com/2rd9qtt.png

Large dots, my eyes are messing with me.

This is mainly for those who care... sort of a ramble on my part. Whats it mean? Beats me.

First, you can't directly compare these two plots. The Iceland plot is the current 15 minute average quake energy. In other words, all the quakes in a 15 minute window, converted to Joules, summed and divided by the number of quakes. Then I ran a 25 hour smoothing window across that. What I get shows what appears to be a general decline in quake energy in Iceland for now. Natch, this can change in short order.

http://i50.tinypic.com/2r5q3w3.png

Next, one that is a bit more difficult to get a grip on. While the data source for the first plot is the en.vedur.is/earthquakes-and-volcanism/earthquakes/ site, and uses whatever shows up, the next plot is from the USGS site, and ONLY USES quakes over magnitude 6.0. In part, this is because of the large quantity of data, and secondly it stretches back from 1973 until the present. Since technology has changed over the years, the increase in the number of small quakes will go up. My logic is that Magnitudes 6.0 and above are less likely to go unnoticed. Even with that, there is a chance that more recent quake reports will catch more data and arbitrarily skew the data. Keep that in mind when looking at the chart.

This chart uses the same method as the first one, but uses a 30 day increment and a 13 month sliding window for smoothing.

The general trend is up... with the caveats I mentioned above.

http://i45.tinypic.com/2q0tt2h.png

I took a look at the plots at http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/Katla2009/stodvaplott.html and I think it shows that the HVO station does not really show the same events as the others, closer to Eyjafjallajökull: the relatively prominent spikes on the others are not visible on the HVO plot at all.

I think HVO shows tremor from Myrdalsjökull - it's a living glacier, after all; it's summer, so the melting must cause settling in the ice; and HVO is situated on the south side of the glacier, quite close.

@ 83 love your work Lurking. very interesting stuff.

re the global seismic energy plot what would be the effect of eliminating quakes of M8 and above? Would that remove the upwards trend?

Perhaps the plot is simply skewed by the recent bout of mega quakes (Sumatra and Chile)

Just passing by and found this advisory from PHIVOLCS:
Taal Volcano Bulletin
08 June 2010
8:00 A.M.
This is a notice for raising the alert level status of Taal Volcano from Alert Level 1 to Alert Level 2.
http://www.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…

The lovely, lovely plot, #83 shows the global temperature effect on glacier melting and a shift in surficial anisotropy (thermal flux in lithosphere shallows).

The driver for this warming trend may in contention to some. It is irrelevant for our purposes here, so we'll stay away from that topic.

The other interesting plot of historic large quakes north of the Eyjaf-Katla area (which you must rotate to correct lat long positions) clearly indicates the tectonic collision intersection of the EVZ and SISZ. Very large forces acting here.

Now you wanted to know the meaning of the shorter averaging scale (15 min EQ map). As you would expect, its got a lovely lovely direct correlate to the historical global temperature trend, in the heating of the ionosphere.

For that, you must look up, not down.

Mulakot webcam video of yesterday's "deposited ash re-entrainment from convection winds" dustdevils!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txrCu-lZ0F8

Many thanks to Lurking for the labor-intensive work behind the the suite of timely EQ data plots, posted yesterday and today.

bonjour à tous. j'ai une question concernant le volcan Grimsvotn. Depuis quelques jours je constate pas mal de tremblements de terre dans la zone.Est ce un signe d'une éruption sur le moyen terme?

@88. That is probably one of the most interesting video capture movies posted here, showing the counter current wind movements on the mountains versus the valley, and its cyclonic influence, in the dust devils that flit across the screen.

Many thanks for your kindness in image capture and provision of the video here.

@ Reynir. is (no. 47)

Thanks for all your hard work - absolutely super!

Looks like it would have taken you some time to put all that together, and it may prove very useful for many of us.

( Am now going to catch up on all these other posts.)

@Kannaboy, n°90
Bonjour Kannaboy, la langue de ce blog étant l'anglais, il vaudrait mieux reposer votre question dans la langue de Shakespeare si vous voulez une réponse :-)

Babelfished #90
>hello with all. j' have a question concerning the Grimsvotn volcano. For a few days I have not badly noted earthquakes in the zone. Is this sign d' an eruption on medium term?

Babled back via translator:

Non. Numéro Les tremblements de terre peu profonds sont probablement dus aux tensions de calotte-cratère qui déplace des systèmes de cratère-fissure. Il fait plus chaud en Islande, comme vous pouvez voir par les jolies fleurs qui sont apparues sur le webcam de Mulakot. De tremblements de terre le mouvement plus profond de magma peut-être, mais lui n'est pas probable qu'une éruption se produise chez Grimsvotn en ce moment, à moins qu'il y ait un dégagement soudain de l'eau de fonte de secondaire-calotte glaciaire.

@ Kannaboy 90

Bienvenu chez nous!

Je suis desolee - ma langue maternelle est l'anglais et de plus le truc pour faire marcher des accents me manque mais je vais essayer de vous repondre comme meme:

Au sujet des tremblements de terre a Grimsvotn:A l'heure actuelle, le volcan Grimsvotn n'est pas du tout a l'une en Islande donc, je suis tout d'accord avec Passerby.

En revanche, le volcan Bardabunga se situe pas tres loin de lui! Des 1998, ce volcan, situe a la meme region (sous le glacier de Vatnajokull)a vu un haut de tremblements de terre surtout pendant les mois derniers ( augmente malgre le changement de la saison).

Cliquez-vous ici mais il faut le traduire avec google:http://www.seismology.harvard.edu/projects/unusEQ/Iceland/index.html

Alors,en ce mmoment, on voit que Eyjafjallajokull est en train de faire un peu de refroidissement(!!) mais comme d'habitude au sujet des volcans,cette situation pourrait changer en un clin d'oeil!

Que faire? Rien faire. Soit une eruption du volcan de Eyjafjallajokull ou soit celle d'une autre il nous faut qu'attendre...

@ Kannaboy et Irna 93

Soit creee en francais ou en anglais votre correspondance marche ici - cet un blog mondial, n'est pas?

Trombley came up in a Volcano listserv email last year - Lee Allison posted it on his blog, and I did a post last year around the time the email went out. (I think I emailed you about it at some point, too, but I could be wrong.)

i think all this tremor earthquakes Volcanos all link to the planetary alignment gravity magnetic field ect.... Ive been following all this since April but earthquake around the world for a year now and since Friday 11th June 2010 Katla showed increased quakes in the last 24 to 36hrs on the 12th June a planetary alignment Jupiter-Saturn-Earth relation Full-moon G-factor mod+ again on the19th June same again but F-Q Moon G-factor =mod++,04-07-10 same but L-Q Moon then the 31st july10 Jupiter-Saturn-Mars-Venus-Earth relation Full-moon,G-factor mod+++ now see if you get a increased in Earthquakes at these times why because if KATLA GOES OFF she more likley to go off in sept10,Oct10,NOV10 Around the 21/22/23rd September very high G-factor dangerous planetary phase,if not somewhere in the world a big earthquake will hit, because HAITI EARTHQUAKE was link to a planetary alignment with was published and also CHILI EARTHQUAKE ;year 2010/planetary/possible Earthquakes and Tsunami warning,volcanic activties all taken from the EUISQR EUROPEAN INSTITUTE FOR SPACE QUANTUM RESEARCH OR Http://www.supernovae_energy.com/2010_haiti_earthquake.htm

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