Volcanic Iceland: Earthquake with magnitude M 5,2 in Þorbjörn mountain (Fagradalsfjall mountain)!!!p1492

Big drop...

[link to hraun.vedur.is]

Yes. Yesterday it dropped not so fast. At this moment it seems we're witnessing a bigger drop.

Last Edited by Cow Anonymous on 09/21/2014 03:56 AM

North-East, yes. It's the part we were waiting for, right?

the drop is unstoppable

better to ask how much it dropped

now that the caldera is into the magma chamber, the very high pressure in there will resist, and even push back sometimes, but gravity is a bitch, and always wins in the end

BIG DROP!

HUGE DROP!!!

Tic Toc Tic Toc ...

Better stay awake for a bit longer....woa!

WOW!!!

Good morning!

Impressive footage - any which way you cut it, this is starting to become a major event.

I see from the cams the wind has shifted which will make i more likely to bring nasties into my area. (showing here the 700 hPA wind map as that is most like at or above the SO2 moves [link to earth.nullschool.net]

This is what happened the other night Luis and then we had a big quake!

i don't know how much of a lag there'll be, but the eruption should intensify now. every single cm of drop puts ever increasing pressure on the chamber. we may even end up with fountains a mile or even more high at the eruption site imho

wow. mesmerising. how much in volume do they SAY this has erupted now?

knowing what we know now, think of that vent as the end of the hosepipe, and the bottom of the caldera as the giant's foot pumping a foot pump like mad, and the giant is gonna get madder and madder and madder

Down....and up...:) No more drop.

Guga, it will go up and then drop again. Does this all the time to us at night. I just took a ruler and placed it on my screen from the very left of the chart to where it is now and the angle of decent is unreal. This caldera is dropping quicker than we think....Ok...rest time.

those sharp 'up' always get flattened out into a general downward curve though, looking back.

Sleep well, MM!

We have an unusual long "quakeless" period guys!

Yeh, if we don't see quakes in connection with the drops it is more likely compaction of the ice, whereas movement of the "cork" should be accompanied by a quake or more unless the whole thing has come loose and now bobs on top of the magma only being help in place by the weight of the water/ice column.

If that were to be the case, we should expect to see water/magma contact shortly and then...

not for long i think...

this drop is consolidated now...

21 September 2014 07:00 - from geoscientist on duty

Last evening (19:00-24:00) about 30 earthquakes were detected, 10 at Bárðarbunga, 10 at the northern end of the intrusion and 5 at Herðubreið and Herðubreiðartögl (Töglin). The largest one was at Bárðarbunga at 22:46 3.9 and five more in the same area were over 3 in size.

From midnight til morning (24:00-07:00), automatically detected events are also around 30, most of them around northwestern Vatnajökull. The four largest events were all in northern part of Bárðarbunga caldera:
at 00:57 magnitude 4.8
at 02:21 magnitude 3.8
at 03:05 magnitude 3.7
at 03:30 magnitude 3.4
No visible changes in eruption at Holuhraun from webcams.

i'm not so sure that's going to happen any more Gav. I think THEY believe this thing is just gonna keep on dropping, and keep on pumping ever increasing amounts of magma out, to form a large new shield volcano, over the next few moths/years. here's a gif i did earlier, using their image,..

[link to makeagif.com]

where the glacier is at it's highest is where we are now, at it's lowest is where they expect it to end up.

as you can see, the caldera is hardly pushing in at all, yet all this stuff has been erupted. the deeper it pushes in, the more stuff gets pumped out, with greater force imho

i can't see the magma coming up through the caldera because it HAS an outlet already, through the dyke, unless the pressure becomes TOO much and it can't keep up with the pumping action of the caldera above, then it might try to find a way UP, or if the caldera fails in a major way

a slow motion eruption would be bad news, cos the magma coming out is very rich in sulphur, as we've seen with these random, small, for now, clouds of s02 floating around, but a fast cataclysmic eruption would be as bad as well, so what do we prefer? It'll be one of them.

whichever way it goes, s02 ahoy!

the quakeless thing could be an indication the system is getting close to being fully lubricated, and the ONLY thing dictating proceedings now is the gravitational collapse of the caldera versus the pressure in the magma chamber, imho.

What I basically mean is that the cork is going to melt thinner by the day even as you have the process you describe above, and the longer it keeps going at it the bigger the chances of water / magma contact.

EDIT: I don't feel the many shallow quakes in the Barda caldera is consistent with a very thick cork. – a few hundred meters maximum.

Can I draw your attention to Cam 1,

I'm kind of hoping its cloud formation, but i'm not entirely sure

Any thoughts?

[link to www.livefromiceland.is]

(lurker since day one)

Last Edited by davejp on 09/21/2014 04:53 AM

is there any literature on how fast a magma chamber can melt the rock of an intruding caldera roof? that is a lot of rock to melt. if we can work out if that rock is being melted, and at what rate, maybe we can make some guesses.

i know they're saying the temps of the magma are very high, up to 1200 degrees, perhaps you're right. perhaps the magma chamber will take charge.

Not sure what you see?

I see steam from the lava / river contact + smoke from the usual eruption location.

Yes, normal clouds coming in from S-SW

if the caldera itself was erupting you'd be in no doubt. over half of the horizon would be heading for the moon.

that redness is interesting. s02 being illuminated by the sun off to the left of the image?

Totally agree about the NICE and the helpfulness. You get a lovely warm feeling when Music Man gives you such paternal advice. Everyone I have spoken to in my area has not even heard of this problem.

. . . . back to the thread and getting more information.

THANKS TO YOU ALL