Getting to Greíps with things

This is not an image of Greíp, it is of the ice of Skaftafell in Vatnajökull. But, any piece of ice from Vatnajökull is the same as any other, and this picture was beautiful. Photograph by Andreas Tille.

In this article I will pick up with the questions regarding age, GPS-tracks and the general setting. Knowing me it is quite likely that I will meander out into wild tangents as I go. Time to Greíp my pen.

 

The age of Greíp

Me doodling volcanic doodles on a map stolen from the Icelandic Met Office. Just a reference for my GPS-musings down below. Nothing is to scale, and I am probably a tad out of whack for most things. But, good enough I guess.

For a volcano that has not erupted (we will get back to that in the next chapter) Greíp is a wild ride. As I noticed it back in 2012 my initial reaction was that it was a run of the mill deep dyke injection of magma. Interesting as such, but not that unusual.

It did though grow on me as I noticed that it was unusually persistent and long-lived, and that it ran up to a certain point and then dead-ended. This normally means that there has been activity there for some while.

Checking backwards we could see that there had indeed been activity prior to this, and that it formed a very well-defined stack of earthquakes reaching upwards. I then surmised that it was a formative sill-dyke system indicating the possible birth of a future central volcano on the edge of the Grimsvötn fissure swarm.

Then came Holuhraun II and stole quite a bit of time from us. So, I handed over the ball to Gaz who ran with it together with Andrej Flis. Up until that article we had called it Unknownabunga, but he named it with Greíp, and since it is a smashing forn-nordic mythological name I hope that the Icelandic naming committee will make it official in some form, perhaps Greípur or Greípagigur.

As I looked at his article, I felt a strong urge to write about it too, but since I am lazy it ended up with me talking endlessly about it with Tommy, Andrej and Gaz. In the end we felt that we had refined our ideas enough to write a more developed series of articles.

As Andrej started to churn out earthquake plots something struck me with the force of a super tanker hitting a jetty. And that was that there is no simple sill and dyke system to be found, instead there is a well-defined magma chamber with all the bells and whistles.

Problem with that is that takes a bit of time to form a magma chamber, far longer than we could find instrumental data for. There was also an intriguing anomaly within the first propagating dyke leg that led from Bárðarbunga towards Greíp during Holuhraun II.

 

Holuhraun I

GFUM station at Grimsvötn, honestly stolen from the Icelandic Met Office.

During the winter of 1796/1787 a lava field mysteriously came into existence between Vatnajökull and Askja. It was found by a couple of Icelanders travelling through the volcanic hinterlands of Iceland.

They noted that the lava was horrible to walk across (illuhraun), and that it had not been there the previous summer when they last ventured out there. I would dearly want to know why they meandered through that neck of the woods two summers in a row, but that is lost in the mist of time.

They then eye-balled the nearest volcano, Askja, and blamed it for the nuisance to their trek. This is the only “evidence” of Askja being the culprit there is, but steadfastly some sources, including Global Volcanism Program, has this eruption as a Askja-eruption against a veritable wall of evidence placing it at the feet of Bárðarbunga.

There is also no compelling evidence or reason to believe that Holuhraun I was not sourced and propagated in the same manner as Holuhraun II, quite the opposite.

This brings us back to the anomaly of the dyke between Bárðarbunga and the vicinity of Greíp. As you analyse the earthquake data for the dyke it rapidly becomes evident that the wall of the magma chamber at Bárðarbunga where the dyke ventured out was closed off, then the earthquake track rapidly diminishes before going silent, and then growing in strength again as it comes closer to the stress-field of Greíp.

The propagation speed here was also quite fast compared to the second leg of the dyke between Greíp and the Baugur vent.

Taking all of this into account leads to the solution that exactly the same dyke (LD1) was in play during Holuhraun I, and that it was left open with quite a substantial amount of residual magma.

And if it bounced at the same knee in 1796/1797, then there either was a stress-field in place there, or Greíp was born out of a large amount of residual magma that through tectonic stress formed a dyke down into the magma reservoir under it.

This means that we can safely date Greíp as being a minimum of 220 years old. If it was already a central volcano with a large enough magma reservoir to create a local stress field capable of diverting a propagating dyke it is older than that, if it formed out of residual magma, then we have a surprisingly exact date for the formation.

 

The three-body problem

One solution to the 3-body problem. Image by MaxwellMolecule. Wikimedia Commons.

This is a famous problem in mathematics regarding orbital mechanics. We can mathematically predict the location of two balls orbiting each other pretty much ad infinitam, but if we chuck in a third ball, we can’t deduce any stable orbit, nor can we predict where the balls would be in the future. Inevitably at least one of the balls will be spun out of the group orbit.

I have always found this one to be highly interesting, and the reason for that is that nature itself seems to be quite happy with creating stable 3-, 4, or even 5-body orbital groups. And we know of such a surprising number of stable multi-body orbital groups that it defies logic, so this is not caused by a random lucky system that somehow against all odds found the one viable option.

Obviously, nature is not very good at mathematics, or our mathematics is lacking something obvious in regards of multi-orbitals. (I can now hear Albert groan over the extreme simplification of a very complex subject.) Finding glaring holes in our understanding of mathematics and physics is one of my great joys in life, I am just too lazy to be getting around to plugging them.

Now why on earth did I amble off into mathematics and the stars orbiting each other? Because when analysing GPS-data in Vatnajökull you rapidly get stuck in a massive multi-body problem of your own. And to confound things even more, you must contend with that depending on which half of the world you view the problem from, you get two different sets of multi-body problems at the same time from the same pesky data.

If this is giving you a headache, I advise you to go back to the prequel and lament over problems with reading instruments and ways that errors can creep in.

 

The GPS-multi body problem

GSIG-station. Stolen during a daring raid against the Icelandic Met Office.

If you are dealing with one volcano only it is very easy to calculate the trajectory of it, and if you have two of them, all you have to do is subtract the influence of A to get the true trajectory of B, and vice versa. Add a third and you are out in the great blue yonder.

In the map above you can see a lot of culprits jostling for space with each other. And to confound the problem a bit more, the GPS-trajectories for the volcanoes change constantly over time. I think we need a brief exposé here over what the individual volcanoes and features are doing right now (as far as is possible to understand.

I am going from North to south and will for now omit Greíp:

Herðubreið: The Holocene volcano of Herðubreið last had a minor eruption at the beginning of the current-interglacial. It was previously believed to be either deeply dormant or gone with the dodo. It has slowly and steadily been inflating since 2007 due to root-infilling with associated magma movement upwards, indicating a possible future eruption.

Askja: Askja inflated slowly between 1961 and 1975 and deflated between 1975 and 2012. After that a very gentle inflation period started indicating that a new eruptive cycle might be coming.

Trölladyngja/Urðarhals: These polygenetic shield volcanoes started to inflate in 2013 and has continued to inflate rapidly well into 2018. Then the inflations stopped quite abruptly but they are not deflating.

Kistufell: This volcano inflated rapidly in 2013 and 2014, deflated during Holuhraun, and then continued to inflate up unto 2018. After that it started to slowly deflate.

Kverkfjöll: This sad has been of a volcano has slowly deflated since at least 1968. This former major player has now permanently moved into a volcanic retirement centre where it now and then whacks a nurse with a cane. Expect it to continue to slowly deflate into oblivion as it is moved off from the volcanic centre of Iceland.

Bárðarbunga: This volcano had slowly been inflating for decades up until the eruption of 2014. During the eruption rapid deflation took place, and as the eruption ended rapid inflation indicated refilling of the volcano. During 2017 the inflation rate started to slow down, and during 2019 the volcano has had a strong deflation signal indicating that the volume of magma is not enough to cover the EW-spread of the fissure swarm.

Hamarínn: No other volcano in Iceland has had such a long and strong inflation period as Hamarínn. Problem is that nobody knows why it is inflating, and why it is not giving off signs of an imminent eruption. It is though the strongest shoving force in this part of Iceland. Basically, this fella needs some serious study down the line (but not here and now).

Grimsvötn: Due to the location of the GFUM GPS-station this volcano is its own three-body problem, or even a four-body problem. The problem is that the volcano has 3 distinct magma chambers that are connected into a deep common magma reservoir.

This means that the magma will always enter into the magma chamber with the lowest pressure, and as magma enters that chamber becomes top dawg and either erupt or end up last in the fuel line. And since magma is almost constantly entering into the system this means that pretty much all the time something different is inflating squeezing the other two.

In the end this means that the poor GPS will move in every conceivable way and change trajectory almost on a monthly basis, with odd spurts that are almost impossible to divinate the origin of.

And every now and then one of the magma chambers will erupt, resetting the system pressure and the refuelling game starts anew.

Háabunga: In a way it is debatable if this is a fourth magma chamber of Grimsvötn or if it is a separate central volcano. There is small amount of earthquake data placing it as a separate entity. The problem is that this volcano is just south of the poor GFUM-station.

Háabunga seems to be inflating in distinct spurts violently pushing GFUM sharply north and up, before the general push south resumes from the 3 chambers of Grimsvötn proper.

Thorðarhyrna: This volcano seems to be a neutrum, neither inflating, nor deflating.

Öraefajökull: Up until 2017 this volcano did not amount to much as GPS-trajectories go. But after that it suffered from a marked episode of inflation that ran up until a few months ago when it calmed down.

Leg Dyke 1: This is the leg between Bárðarbunga and Greíp. Normally we do not talk about separate dykes and their effect on a larger scale, but in this case, it is warranted. During the Holuhraun II eruption it inflated massively, and after the eruption it remained in a neutral dilated state.

Leg Dyke 2: Obviously this part of the dyke inflated widely during the eruption, even more so than LD1. But, after the eruption this part of the dyke started to deflate rapidly as magma started to cool down.

Now that we know the culprits, we need to know two facts. A long-term deflating volcano will gently suck things towards it like a mild-mannered black hole, and a long-term strongly inflating volcano will gently push things away.

Or in other words, everything should be moving away from Hamarínn and towards Kverkfjöll (obviously in different trajectories since there are quite a few volcanic obstacles on the way jostling each other). Think of it as a pool-table that is slightly tilted towards the east corner-pocket, with Hamarínn being the pool cue. It should all generally be ambling towards Kverkfjöll.

Up until around 2011 this was indeed true, but after that things start to become ever more out of whack. It is like an X-factor is creating a mound on our otherwise flat and obstacly tilted pool-table.

The volcano that should be most clearly be pushed away from Hamarínn and towards Kverkfjöll is Grimsvötn. It should be pushed ESE by Hamarínn, and sucked NNE by Kverkfjöll, giving it a general trend NE.

Problem is once more the placement of GFUM, the signal of Grimsvötn is happily masking that motion and showing general SE movement. The east is congruent with Hamarínn, but the massive inflation is reverting any N-signal into south movement instead. Pesky volcanoes interfering with hypothetical trajectories showing up.

Now, if we take the longer trend instead and would sum over several eruptions, we would indeed get the NE signal, well up until 2011. Then it changes with a more ENE trend if we try to remove the inflation cycle effects.

The same very weak anomalies show up on most volcanoes affected by these two long-term effects. It is like there is a slight mound diverting them just a little bit. An X-factor that should not be out there.

Problem is that there are several strong signals out there muddling the waters as we try to hear a whisper of things to come. And to boot this has been the most raucous decade in Vatnajökull in instrumentally recorded times.

Still, in the faint signals we get the possibility to deduce that there is something more than LD1 and LD2 affecting things, and that highest lump on the road seems to be at that infamous knee where LD1 turned sharply into LD2. There is definitely a stress-field there slowly picking up strength as evidenced by the flatter slightly flatter east trajectory and a clear change in the NS-trajectory. Hopefully it will soon become clearer as the noise of 2014 diminishes, and more magma arrives into the reservoir.

Before Albert comes around janking my hypothetical chain of circumstantial evidence, I will freely admit that this is quite a bit of theoretical ho-hum, and that I would not even write about if Andrej and Gaz had not come up with quite a bit of a more substantial case in the previous chapter.

As it is, I have one firm leg to stand on, while the other leg at best proves that it is hard, but not impossible, to say anything with a high degree of certainty from the GPS-system.

As global warming does its thing and more nunataqs crop up (and receives GPS-stations), things will become much easier. The vagueness in what I have written about above is mainly due to lack of near-field data for a lot of volcanoes.

Perhaps Albert in a later chapter will invoke his awesome powers of satellite derived InSAR to bring clarity. I can just imagine what a headache all the ice-movement and ice-fluctuations will bring.

Now, what would happen if we skipped the long-term trend changes and instead had a hypothesis that the increasing number of earthquakes on the plots of Andrej Flis that Gaz mentioned should be moving the nearby GPS-stations around. Will that be fruitful?

Up above we definitely found something at Grimsvötn (GFUM), but that could be because of local changes instead of my fevered hypothesis. We need more evidence, so let us hunt among the other stations in the vicinity.

Gengissigid (GSIG), is the closest station to Kverkfjöll and should be fairly stationary with just the tectonic movement east and be deflating. In April of 2016 something drastic happened and it started to push north and show inflation. Either a volcano known for deflation and no NS-trajectory has decided to inflate like mad, or something near it is inflating quite a bit. Let us check further and if it is local shall we.

Station Kverkfjöll (KVEC), is showing the same pattern, just a bit less of inflation since it is further away. Problem is just that it would be showing the same regardless, we need to hunt for another GPS-station less probable to be affected by Kverkfjöll.

GIGO is fairly far away and is impacted hard by the inflation at Urðarhals. Same goes for the intermittent station URHC.

DYNC is out of commission since a year ago, and it is also a bad one to do long trendlines on since it is so heavily affected by Holuhraun II. RJUC, Rjúpnabrekkukvísl, is mainly just showing things related to Bárðarbungas deflation, same goes for Kista (KISA).

The signals are just to big from Bárðarbunga and Urðarhals for anything to be visible, also this is where the main spread of Iceland is occurring, and that produces a lot of noise.

So, in the end we find that there might be a weak signal caused by blockage to the Hamarínn toward Kverkfjöll. And that Grimsvötn seems to react to something close by, and that either Kverkfjöll is inflating, or there is a point of inflation behind in under the ice.

What to do now, well, we can remove Kverkfjöll at least as the point of inflation, there has been no such signals detected in the form of earthquakes, and we do know that there has been signals indicating influx of magma into Greíp. And looked at things in that light, we now can reverse our viewpoint and state that we seem to have a bit of corroborating evidence in the form of GPS-data for Greíp.

The hunt for GPS-signals did not produce a huge smoking gun, but it confirmed the earthquake data debated by Andrej and Gaz in the previous chapter. Order is restored in the Universe.

 

Eruptive characteristics of Greíp

The Grand Theft Ploticus from the Icelandic Met Office vault did not involve 50 Norwegian reindeers. No pirates was hurt during the raid.

 

 

Even though there are a couple of unknowns of the volatile content of the magma in Greíp we can safely assume that it will be congruent with either Grimsvötn mainline type basalt derivatives or be a Gjálp-type intermediary basalt in between Grimsvötn and Bárðarbunga.

In other words, a nasty smelly volatile gas-filled basalt. The water content in the basalt itself will though be small since it is plume derived.

We do not know how long the magma would have resided in situ, but it is probably not long enough to have evolved anything more interesting than andesite, most likely it is a slightly evolved basalt.

Here our friends of all things Hawaiian concluded that any eruption would be in the form of large strombolian eruptions or lava-fountains. Not a bad guess, except for two things.

The first is that the emergent volcano would come up in a valley below the ice. The second is that the heat would rapidly melt the ice, giving the recipe for ash. Combine those two and you get a pooling of liquid melt water surrounding the emergent volcano.

The likelihood that Greíp in a single eruption would be able to build an edifice high enough to avoid the water and the ice is slim to none. Yes, Gjálp built an elongated cone sticking up above the ice and water, but it started its life on a pre-existing ridgeline.

So, expect an ashy Grimsvötn style eruption ranging in about VEI-3 to a small VEI-4. Anything smaller would just immediately quench out and be noticed just as another Icelandic tremor episode, with perhaps a bit of stinky water emerging from under the glacier.

 

Conclusion

When dealing with something new that is not mainline in science it is best to take baby steps. The only thing I have been able to come up with above is basically a few things to look for in the future in regards of GPS-trajectory changes, and the possibility to perhaps shed more light via long-term plotting of InSAR.

I could though say more about a future possible eruption, and that saved this chapter a bit. Science is equally much about failing to find evidence, as finding evidence. But I will try other ways to find smoking guns.

I also completely left out the part of the possible intermingling of magmas at Greíp, and its effects on Bárðarbunga via LD1. I will return to that in the next chapter, because in that regard I found something more fruitful to say.

So, I will be back with the astounding tale of the quad-junction everyone missed.

CARL REHNBERG

 

229 thoughts on “Getting to Greíps with things

  1. Excellent article!
    Greip first eruption coud be small or very large
    Most likley it woud be a small affair
    A large VEI 3 or small VEI 4
    Think Grimsvötn 2004 or a smaller version of Gjalp
    Eruptions break the icesheet and forms surtseyan activity that last for a week.
    Fjöllum river woud go strong with meltwater

    To form a caldera it woud need to go above 8km3
    We dont know how much eruptible magma is inside there even.

    If an eruption in Vatnajökull is large enough and most important last long enough a cone grows in the meltwater lake … and magma and water dont meet anymore… and lava flows and fountains out instead forming a tuya in the Glacier
    No Vatnajökull eruption have reached that stage in our lifetimes so far

  2. I love it when you juggle goldfish while riding a unicycle, Carl.

    • Here is the start of things, M2.4 has a very distinct and interesting signal. Also, note the LF-tremor starting before the swarm. This could indicate that the earthquakes are pressure driven, combining this with what looks like wet earthquakes containing volcanic fluids, well it is interesting.


      • This was the second such episode in days shaking most of all the stations in Iceland coming out of Herdubreid. Let us just say that this is a system with some real bowel-movement problems.
        I seriously wonder how many more it will take before things start to come out. Not a lot I think. So, we could be watching a cool little runup.

        • At which of the 2 swarms are we looking at? The one at Herðubreiðartögl or the one at Herðubreið proper? Or are these 2, however kms apart, connected?

          And probably a more stupid question, but Herðubreið we all know is one of the world’s best examples of a tuya. But what is Herðubreiðartögl? A fissure? Crater row? Is it even a sister of the tuya or has it got nothing to do with it?

          • I have asked Andrej for a couple of plots of Herdubreid that will better answer your questions.
            The one that is currently a bit worrying is the one at Herdubreidartögl. It is more of a polygenetic fissure shield, looking a bit like Vatnafjöll.

          • I might start feeling a little bit smug if this continues 🙂

      • As there seems to be a five day cycle to these episodes it will be interesting to see what happen in the next four days. Now I am waiting for a couple of regular small tectonic swarms before the next tremor episode with volcanic earthquakes.

      • Are you sure about the LF-tremor? To me it looks just like weather related noise with an embedded teleseism from the Costa Rica M6.1. There is nothing on the red green blue tremor plot.

        If one had access to the original waveforms, could it be possible to cross correlate signals to get pairwise arrival time differences and then triangulate the source?

        Interesting swarm nonetheless and a fine article about Greip.

        • And to answer your questions.
          I have taken into account the teleseism (it is not showing since it is so small). I have also taken into account any crashing waves since they are the only thing that can create LF that is weather related.
          Yes, you can time differences on LF, it is just a wee bit harder.

          • Are you sure the wiggles starting around 20:00 aren’t the teleseism from CR? The timing puts the wave propagation speed around 3.5km/s and I’m sure I have seen similar wiggles from similar sized quakes in that area before.

          • Ah, those wiggles, no, I was not refering to the long slow wiggle, I am referencing to the short swelly wiggles.
            Problem here is that the public system is showing a hard filtered 0.7Hz, and that is not the best cut off frequency on the planet… I should one day do a post upon how things look in different frequencies, and then compare it all to a broadband spectrogram.
            But that is for a completely different article.

  3. Agung went boom again, this one quite a bit bigger than the last few:

    • Note to future watchers of this Agung video. TURN YOUR VOLUME DOWN. Horrible high warning tone through the whole thing. I had headphones in. Now I have a screamer of a headache….caveat emptor.

      • Oops forgot to warn people. I always have it on mute. That sound is the SRR (portrayed by the yellow squiggly line.

        • Estimates based on photographs and screenshots from CCTV put the farthest reaching lava bomb at a distance of approximately 3.6km north-northwest of the crater. It’s still inside the 4km exclusion zone, but not by a huge margin.

          The explosion in the video looks really impressive, but to give a bit of perspective, this is about one tenth of what Hekla is capable of when it comes to throwing hot stones around.

          • We should definitely not belittle that feat. 3.6km is up in the top ten rung of stones lofted by a volcano.

          • A bit of clumsy wording from my side. I never meant to belittle Agung as a stone thrower. It is after all named the great mountain – and rightly so. It was more a case of once again pointing out the might and power of all things Icelandic. Not that more of that is what this blog really needs, but it’s just mind boggling to see the video of that explosion and then imagining the same thing scaled up ten times.

          • I think I was the clumsy one, I just wanted to emphasize that Agung really chucked an Olympic length here.

  4. Great article!
    If Herðubreið erupts, this would the first icelandic eruption i would have tracked start to finish.
    HOW COULD YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN KATLA? THE MOST TERRIFYING VOLCANO EVER?

    • And in the middle of the comment Tallis was eaten by an inner Teen Prepper who broke out like an Alien from the chest of a crewmate on Nostromo. 🙂

    • Well, it does fit with the “didn’t see it coming” idea.

      As for prepping, even government organizations have run zombie apocalypse scenarios to measure how robust the emergency response infrastructure is. The general idea is if you are geared up to handle that, you are likely able to handle what actually happens.

      • I love going over disaster scenarios in my head and going over i could do for self preservation. I don’t have much faith in modern society due to the public’s dissociation with serious issues.
        I am not really right in the mind but i do enjoy going over how i could die in a ton of scenarios and thinking about i could stop my death.

        • I do the same… To the extent that I have now laid actual plans, approved with my wife, to sell our shop and use the money to buy land, self build for off-grid living, attempting to future-proof my designer lifestyle (involving plants adapted for slightly warmer climes, permaculture etc).
          I am currently hoping to begin actually working on this next year.

          • Just an FYI… a nonprofessional estimate by me, is that following a full scale cut to the supply chain, residents of population centers will be reverting to hunter-gatherers after about 4 days as the shelves empty out.

            It is almost a certainty that they will not have the skills to forage the surrounding land. And that the available nutrients per sq km will not sustain many.

            This basically means that nearby farmers are going to be over run.

  5. Fun times! Great article and can’t wait for follow up.

    btw. Unrest at Torfajökull still ongoing with a shallow 2.7.

  6. Something for the Biologist that occasionally wanders through the Cafe;

    https://newatlas.com/extinct-bird-reappears-iterative-evolution/59639/

    Sure, it’s not as entertaining a story as how a wayward tomato plant managed to colonize a Surtsey faster that other Nordic plants, but it’s interesting on it’s own. {The Surtseyan variety of Solanum lycopersicum is extinct by mandate} It had gotten there in a manner that many grasses and plants use to proliferate, by hitching a ride in the gastrointestinal tract of an animal. Evidently someones lunch didn’t agree with them very well.

    • Is the surtsey tomato plant actually called its own subspecies?

      • That plant was pooped out by a sicentist that was careless
        Its not a subspecies.. just common tomato
        The plant was instantly terminated by staff when it was disocvered
        Tomatoes are subtropical plants… and cannot grow outside in Icelands.. subpolar oceanic climate

        • Thats what I thought but lurking has a weird way of being completely random and off topic sometimes but also telling the truth about something that isnt the main point of the comment…

          Sometimes plants can turn to new subspecies very fast but you are right with tomatoes not being able to grow in Iceland.

          • Yes I’ve been busy, lets just say I have gone back to hawaii and discovered some really big things about the big islands holocene activity, and in particular kilauea, and by big I mean almost jesperian in scale.

            I have also never talked about this stuff in comments before either 🙂

          • What have you discovered tell me
            If you adds me as FB friend you can tell right away
            Kilauea is my favorite volcanic too
            I posts alot in Volcanocafe FB group

          • Im curious what have you discovered? This should be in your comming VC Hawaii article seriers
            Hawaii is my favorite volcanoes too

            Now back to Greip and Iceland for topic of this article

          • Lets just say it involves at least 3000 km2 of 10+ meters deep pyroclastics…

          • Then we haves Grimsvötns 150 km3 Sakursunarvatn basalt tephra event in holocene

          • The original thing I was writing is probably going to be will put on hold indefinitely, that series would have basically been at least 3 pages all over 4000 words and also only describing what all my many comments are about anyway, much better to set a new topic. Many of those older theories I had are now obsolete anyway, in my more recent research it seems likely kilauea will not erupt on any meaningful scale for at least another year from now, the ‘1790’ LERZ eruption was 2 separate eruptions and neither happened in the year 1790, one took place around 1783, the other some time between 1790 and 1800, so it is not as close of an analogy to last year as I earlier assumed, and while the first flow was a bigger eruption than 1955 or 1960 it was still much smaller than 2018. Kilauea will probably erupt in the next year or two but it will be tiny lava flows in halemaumau or maybe filling pu’u o’os deep pit, nothing big and probably episodes lasting less than a day, really tiny activity. It will probably take a while to do the sort of large scale activity I was proposing, something like at least 5 years.
            In the mean time we will probably see some red action in Iceland, maybe sooner rather than later.

        • Dunno if I would say he/she was careless. When ya gotta go, ya gotta go.

          As for speciation, a single instance we would not qualify. It would have been more of a cultivar had if survived and propagated. Much like the many varieties of ultra hot peppers bring just various cultivars of a Habanero species.

          • Tomatoes are quite hardy. I’ve seen cherry tomato plants in vacant lots.
            Then again I do not live in Iceland.

      • Surtsey became of course a huge magnet for the locals during the eruption and after
        In early 1970 s a group of teenage boys rowed out in a small boat from their home in Heimeay
        The gang landed on Surtsey where they planted numerous potatoes just for prank fun.
        The young boys planted many… something thats forbidden
        During the summer the plants started tog grow quickly..
        Biologists soon discovered them and the boys crime

        The boys was forcefuly taken to Surtsey and forced to dig these up under staff watch.
        They where forced to pay money too as file

        • The biologists are lucky they didn’t plant Kudzu. That stuff grows like mad. Its native to Japan, and became a prolific grower due to winter freezes. When intentionally introduced to the US… it became a problem.

          • Interesting thing about kudzu: the ground up root is used in China as a treatment for alcoholism.

          • Once more proving that Chinese herbal medicine does not work. Kudzu is about as effective against alcoholism as rhinoceros horns are for limp dicks.

            When dealing with ho-hum hokey medicin there is a question to be asked every time, and that works on all of them. “Why are there no Chinese herbalists combating Ebola-outbreaks?”. You can substitute Chinese herbalists for any other ho-humer version and that sentence will apply.

            Just think about it, you have never heard about Homeopats Against Borders fighting Ebola in Congo…

            And while I am ranting: Get yer wee arses waxxed, or be measly scoundrels.

            Why do we know that it does not cure alcoholism? Well, because a billion Asians eat the humble kudzu and still drink like there is no tomorrow.

            In the end the humble Kudzu might be one of the plants that will keep us all from starving to death. The entire plant is quite edible.

            The root is one of the few things that can compete with corn-starch, the flower is used for grapelike-tasting desserts and drinks, and the leaf can be used in salads.

            I will now meander off into my regular workday, envisioning hoards of galumphing volcano-preppers silently munching away on kudzu-infestations.

          • Maybe could be used as cattlefeed. Lot of cows standing around chewing the kud-zu

            (sorry!)

          • Actually, cattle fodder was one of the selling points that was used to induce farmers to be plant the stuff. Unlike its native habitat, the winter freeze that kept it in check doesn’t or rarely happens in the deep south.

            We like hard freezes. It slows down the kudzu and impacts the bug population.

  7. Small question here. Do you think IMO reads this site and take notes from posts, and carl have you been given feedback, answers and theories to your posts from IMO. Personally I think this region is a pressure steam cooker, with tectonic forces being altered due to the region high activity

    • Way back last year I asked the same thing regarding HVO, and surprisingly someone from USGS actually had gone on here before and probably still does, maybe many people in fact. I dont know about IMO but with Carl’s extensive support of them and how much a lot of this sites viewers like Iceland it is probably the same but more, there is probably a log of the location of IP adresses somewhere.

    • Yes Ian, quite a few do read this site from IMO.
      I do not think that the IMO takes actual notes of what we write, but there have been quite a few papers in the last few years that have taken up on things first written in here.
      They have made us aware of how much they appreciate our support of them, and they are often answering questions about technical things.

      • Actually Carl do you know if anyone from HVO looked at volcanocafe during the eruption last year? I do remember that comparison to the 1790 eruption only really started being used after I and a few others said it on here and this was already well into the eruption, after it settled at fissure 8 and was going beyond historical observation.

      • Thank you for your comments carl. I do wish orgs like IMO could share their thoughts and ruminations and share or even discuss their data and projects with us to widen their views and answers .

        • IMO does not ruminate on things.
          They issue what I call Stone Tablets.
          A proper Stone Tablet is very short and condensed:
          “An eruption started at Thingmuli Volcano at 10.31, scientific flight will be performed at 12.19. Exclusion zone upheld at 10km from Thingmuli Jökulhlaup will destroy the Road 1 near Höfn at 16.47”. (there is obviously no eruption at Thingmuli, this is just an example)

          IMO works with public safety. Anything else comes as a number 5 or even lower on their list. And at that they are the best in the world (together with the Indonesians).

          The most famous Stone Tablet was issued for Hekla in 2000 at 18.00 via the TV news. “Hekla will erupt at 18.21, permanent exclusion zone at 15km.”

          That is why you are well advised to run like hell when IMO issues a stone tablet. Otherwise a stone will flatten you into a tablet.

  8. Yet another eq near Mayotte, 5.0. Its almost like slo-mo of Kilauea 5.x last year. There is some little stuff on twitter under #MAYOBS but not much I can understand.

    • /Comments about moderation to be taken via email.
      Let us try with 48 hours this time to ponder things.

      • Eh, the plant theme started with a comment about tomatoes growing on a volcano.
        Volcano-plant interaction.

      • You might want to be a little more careful you two. Don’t end up getting banned it would be a shame!

  9. Hi Folks,

    Suffering from a bad case of LackOfEurptionItis here and was wondering, following the Greip discussion is it now the valcano in Iceland considered for the next eurption?

    The recent large magma reverberation quake measured across Iceland suggested that things were entering a ‘more than interesting’ phase. What would it take to make it go pop?

    Remembering back to a question i posted about the Barda Crisis before the eruption, would Greip also form a dike km’s deep and a metre wide or has it already and what does it look like?

    And last question, I am now more familiar with activity in the last few weeks but what would mark a departure from the current activity to a state of ‘this is making me sit up in my chair’ or better/worse ‘hold onto your chairs/hats!’

    I love the scientific nature of these posts. Keep it up, never dumb it down but my own writing is not quite there yet!

    Richie

    PS. Volcanoes will do what ever they want to do

    • I wouldn’t put Greip top of the list, the main ones like Katla, Hekla, Grimsvotn, Askja and Bardarbunga are more likely to erupt next. It’s all probabilities; we know the eruptive cycles of these volcanoes and can make a best guess as to when an eruption could happen. We know very very very little about Greip and therefore we can’t make an informed guess.

      A decent quake swarm is what we’re waiting for, one that grows in intensity with time and lots of 2 and 3 magnitude quakes.

    • I will return to the magma reservoir, its shape and compare it to dykes in the next instalment. Well… unless the next part grows to long again…

      I have Greíp on my “Not impossible that I will live to see an eruption from it”-list.

      I would put in Öraefajökull and Herdubreid on the list of volcanoes that are likely to go off that Gaz gave, probably even before Askja.

      • Grimsvotn is always the most likely overall, I’m betting on it erupting next year. At the moment(!), nothing seems imminent any time soon…

      • Torfajokull, Herdubreid, Oraefajokull, Grimsvotn, Hekla, Reykjanes…. Those are my bets for next eruption… (Of course it’s really difficult to guess which one is the one)

  10. More questions about things Greip and wiggles on the drumplots:

    The station closest to Greip (that I know about) is DJK. Quite often you can observe a peculiar pattern in the drumplot of this station (like yesterday). It’s a very periodic signal with many repeating small ticks, separated between 30-60s in time. The pattern is not possible to detect at any nearby station, at least not in the public drumplots. The individual ticks look like actual measured signals and not like an instrument problem. It reminds me a lot of the “drumbeat” quakes that can sometimes be found in andesitic and dacitic volcanoes, usually associated with ascent of magma. Mount St Helens is a good example. This VC article suggests that there could be Greip magma that may have had time to evolve into andesite. Could these ticks be actual drumbeat quakes, providing circumstantial evidence of the supposed chamber with evolved magma down there, or is there some other mechanism at play here? Just playing with the thought…

    • It was a few weeks back I screenshot KIS drumplot for similar anomalies, this pattern did not appear anywhere else including DJK so maybe it is some sort of transmission interference.

      Also, we know that someone is up there working so it could possibly be noise from the equipment?

    • A very good question.
      I have seen that pattern on other stations placed very near or inside the Jökull.
      It is therefore more probable that it is moving ice chugging away in baby steps as the glacial flow has a spurt of movement.

      So, I do not think it is andesite or dachite chugging steadily upwards, even though it saddens me to say so.

      • Kinda figured. I guess the day we see a signal like this on several drumplots over a wider area is the day to be a bit excited about it.

  11. Carl not ALL of Chinese medicine is hogwash. Where do you think the latest artemesinin-based antimalarials came from? Plants contain chemicals. Its hogwash ratio is similar to that of medieval Western herbalism.

    • Even a blind sauropod can write the word gastroenteritis if it gets enough time on a keyboard.

      I am duly noting that I have not found Western Herbalists against County Limits fighting the plague outbreak in Mongolia.

      My point is that there will obviously be quite a few useful chemical compounds in plants. But I am betting on that nowadays it will be evidence based pharmacological research that will find an overwhelming amount of those compounds.

      • This is actually my field of expertise, but yes you CAN use science to find medicinal compounds in plants. And yes some of those scientists (many many papers out there) choose to investigate specific plants because there is local lore about the plant having certain properties. It is kind of like when volcanologists use local legend to look for clues about the behavior of a specific volcano.

        Vincristine, an anticancer drug, is derived from Vinca, the weed with nice blue flowers.
        Taxol comes from a Yew tree.
        And we all know bout foxglove and digitalis.

          • Discovered in 1897 by Felix Hoffman at Bayer AG. He purified it from Salix instead of the pretty poisonous decocts made out of spiraea ulmaria that had been used previously in folk medicine, and then he synthesized it into pure form.
            I learned the history of that one since I take it daily.

            Not the best example for the case of folk medicine and herbalism.

      • It is not my field of expertise. I am at best a gifted amateur that has been hi-jacked by professionals and shoved into a hazmat suit to rectally tops African fruit-bats in the search for strains of Ebola.
        The hi-jacking was done by an ex of mine who was a world class molecular biologist specialising in the worst kinds of viruses possible. “Come to Africa for vacation”, she said.

        I envisioned sitting on my arse drinking beer on the savann. Meh, all of a sudden I was in that blasted suit in the heat poking bats in the arse inside a cave filled with elephant carcasses, bat-guano and cockroaches milling about.
        Let us just say that I had a very abrupt learning curve during those weeks.

        Also, being married to an MD is a bit of a good piece of learning about medicin.

        So, the only non-western medicin sans anything that has been working against Ebola would be an organisation of one.
        Fat Middle-aged Geophysicists Without a Clue, I am the sole member.

        Here’s my beef. Pharma-companies, Universities, and so on and so forth, spend billions in your favourite currency each year upon checking everything from ants, via plants, to cow udders for things usable as medicin. It is done via the scientific process.

        Herbalists, snakeoil-sellers, ancient-medicin-survivalists, anthroposophical dingbats, and so on and so forth does not follow any known scientific processes while they are non-doing their non-investigations. Instead they poke their finger up their wazoo and “feel” things.

        I might be harsh, but I stand by every single word.

        So, did Fat Middle-aged Geophysicists Without a Clue follow scientific procedures while topsing fruit-bats in the arse? Ya bet ya… I was monitored by no less than two Ph.D. students, one associate professor and a full-blown professor harping on me on every detail…
        I blame the Ph.D. students for my misery. They where supposed to go into the suit, not me. Problem was that one was to small, and the other was insanely claustrophobic.

        Problems do seem to find me at the most esoteric moments. Let us just say that I constantly live in interesting times.

        • Fruit bats are kind of cute but are probably the reservoir for Ebola.
          They also carry rabies and several other weird viruses that will make you quite ill. So you’d better be following protocol.

          The funny thing is the pharma companies thought they could improve the odds of finding medicine vs. the local shaman/druid/whatever, with high throughput screening. It didn’t work.

          They have better luck looking for things where the shamans said they might be, in other words, herbalist is a slight improvement over random variability.

          Most herbal medicine systems are a mixture of non-quantitative empirical observation, mythology and magical thinking.

          And why yes, I am (well, was) a molecular biologist. Publications and all.
          Not exceptionally good at math, though.

          • I do believe in Mixology!

            At least that some of the weird shit that they do will taste well, and that all of it will imbibe me.

  12. Carl I haves a question about Greip Arera
    Why did the Holuhraun dyke suddenly turned North when it hit Greip?
    Like it was hitting a wall or something!
    Likley a tectonic thing after all the boundary goes North and not east.
    But why did it … not intrude into Greips possible magma chamber ?

    • This is a very complex question Jesper.

      There is actually a paper stating that there could have been lava going from Greíp into the dyke. We have so far though not been able to replicate the result in a plot of our own. So I am honestly a bit sceptical.

      Back to your question. As magma enter into a magma chamber it inflates it, this in turn causes excess pressure that is rippling outwards in the rock creating a stressfield. This means that it takes more energy as pressure increases to enter the stressfield.
      So, it bounced on the stressfield. And after a while it hit the far larger stressfield of Askja and was halted dead in its tracks.
      Do note, this is a theory that is yet not proven.

      On top of that, as it entered the boundary of Grimsvötns fissure swarm it probably found more fertile ground that was easier to crack going along the pre-existing fractures, that going across them.

      In other words, the lava followed the path of least resistance.
      In so many ways LD1 is far more interesting than LD2, but that is the subject of the entire next chapter of our Greípyssey.

      • How much magma remains inside the Holuhraun dyke Carl ?
        Im soure its quite a bit alot of magma that gets on the move in Iceland never erupts.

        The Holuhraun dyke is both long ( 50 km ) and really deep … if its massive enough there coud be convection and mineral cumulates that sinks down as the Dyke cools
        But it depends how thick the Holuhraun dyke was too. Im soure its pretty massive.
        Whats the volume of the Holuhraun dyke?

        • I will return to that in the next one, but LD2 does not contain a lot of residual magma. LD1 is probably a bit more pregnant.

      • Is that because LD1 went against the grain so to speak, as far as the direction of most of the fissures in the area are concerned/oriented?

        • Another very good question, but I will sit on the answer until Chapter III of the Greíp-saga.

        • I consider LD1 a radial dyke within the bardarbunga massif so it could have gone in 359 other degrees of orientation. The stress field, or open pathway left from holhuraun I dyke path, at the time favoured this direction.

        • That would be quite an exciting new way to define the scope / area of influence of a volcano! The stress field of a volcano could be the outer boundary of what is a volcano and what is another one. This would mean you could picture volcanos as if they were breathing, depending on there level of activity / how well fed they are at the moment!

          Follow up question: What if the stress field of Askja was even closer to Askja itself? Would Holuhraun have been further north? And is Askja able to erupt from Holuhraun, assuming a temporary small stress field/low charge for Bardabunga/Vatnajokull?

          • You’ve still got to factor in elevation, holhuraun II erupted in the low lying (relatively) lava plain. If Askja’s stress field had been less the dyke may still have popped up where it did due to increases in elevation if it went any further.

            I would doubt that Askja could follow in holhuraun II’s footsteps, much more likely to be along the graben to the south or towards the north. I’d have to study a few stress field papers to give you a full response as to why but I’m currently juggling cooking dinner with a teething angry monster and a poorly bed monkey. I hope to sit down and relax somewhere near dawn…

          • Really good questions.
            I will briefly try to adress it.
            If the theory sticks it would work like that. Holuhraun II would have ended up a bit closer to Askja. And Askja has already erupted in the vicinity countless time.
            Volcanism in that particular area seems to be viciously competitive, both at the bottom as they compete for the fresh magma, and on top through use of brunt force.
            If the theory holds it would explain many things in areas like these. Problem is to find a way to test the theory. We need much more data to do that.

          • I fully agree with Gaz, gravity is also very important, so is also the pressure of the “offensive” volcano and the height of that one compared to the defensive “volcano”.

            I do not think there is a single theory to explain it all, instead different forces will create a unique environment with unique volcanoes birthing very unique eruptions. Change just some few factors from Holuhraun and you would have ended up with an intra-caldera eruption instead.

          • I recall that IMO had Askja on yellow alert for a while around the start of the eruption. Were they being over-cautious or could it have also erupted if the conditions were right?

          • According to all that was known back then the magma could have entered Askjas magma chambers, and some of those contain really nasty rhyolite that go boom if rapid heated.

            I would say it was a good call on IMOs behalf. After all, that spitball of magma was careening all over the place to begin with.

          • If 2014 Holuhraun erupted farther up in the Glacier we woud have gotten a Gjalp like event … but with a bit less intensity than Gjalp 1996 it woud still melt hole in the ice and form surtseyan activity and large meltwater flood down the floodplains to the North

          • Sorry Jesper, but it would not have become a Gjálp eruption. The reason Gjálp turned effusive so quickly is that it happened on top of ridge line. So, the ice there was thin.
            An eruption or more there and we end up with a spiffing Nunataq to bold down a seismometer on.

            Holuhraun II would have ended up in a valley with very thick ice, and that would have given us a Grimsvötn caldera style eruption.

          • Carl …
            I meant if the Gjalp eruption continued it woud build up a cone and lava woud flow out as ice and water dont mix when the pile grows higher.

            Gjalp formed a Hyroclastic pillow lava ridge with some sheet lavas
            And lots of pyroclasts
            First stage in Tuya formation

          • A tuya formation in Vatnajökull
            Is identical to Surtseys phases
            Only that its subglacial

            No Grimsvötn eruption have reached a Tuya phase in our lifetime so far

            First explosive subglacial surtseyan or pheratoplinian activity

            And then effusive lava flows and fountains flows out from the growing cone Island in the meltwater lake

            And question Carl: did Herdubreid form during one single eruption?
            Then it was a very large one

            Now back to Greip

  13. I’m looking for earthquake beachballs and their explanation

    I’m sure some while back Lurking posted a good one – but the only ones I found on youtube were fairly simple ones – and I can’t get my head around this one – beyond it probably being thrust as it is dark in the middle https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us70003kyy/moment-tensor

    anyone care to write it up as a post and make it part of the volcanology basics drop down menu ?

    • Hear hear!
      I know that Lurking wrote one, but I think it would be a truly spiffing idea if he could do an updated version. 🙂

      • I got to go cut grass right now. Just finished doing a soil test for a friends pepper plants. His soil is better than mine.

        • We all hope for a bit of beachball bonanza when you are finished farming 🙂

          • My febile Reaper pulled through and perked right up. Non of the Ghost triplets have shown any problems.

            I still need to push the soil pH down a bit on all of them. Evidently they love acidic soil just like our future Azalea overlords.

        • It’s transplanted and added to. It just needs caretaker tweaking. If any of yall wish to add to it, feel free.

          (It’s in the back-channel que for review)

          • Spiffing! I have heard rumours about a giant eruption coming around the corner from Albert, so coordinate the balls visavi his plan.
            After that I have part III and IV of Greíp… I blame Andrej Flis, he made a plot that got our collective heads churning.
            Let us just say that he has found some dang good “evidence” of the stress-field hypothesis. And in some quite unexpected places around the planet.

          • Yeah, but I nearly spoiled the “Oh!” bit for one article that I need to get back to.

      • Tallis, keep them for Twitter where they can drift in a sea of animosity and not on VC – let’s stick to the science.

        • And slightly gentler ruminations. A bit of rumination is good for the soul.
          We do not as such hinder a bit of OT now and then, it is when the OT is relentlessly plodding the same field week in and week out, completely drowning out the ruminations of others, that we tend to have to do something.

          Heaven only knows that I can go out on a tangent after all…

      • Careful. If I am targeted we could both wind up banned after my response. I tend towards phreatomagmatic. That would seriously tick me off. I like it here.

  14. I always been intrigued by one thing: one can draw a line from Snaefellsnes to Kverfjoll, crossing Langjokull, Hofsjokull and Bardarbunga. South of this line, we find a spreading ridge oriented SW-NE (in many places between Reykanes and Grimsvotn), but north of that line, we find a spreading ridge oriented S-N and only from Askja northwards.

    This is exactly where Greip is located and where the Holuhraun dike abruptly shifted from northeastwards to northwards.

    The reason for this geological feat? I do not know.
    But it’s roughly the path where the plume was located in the geological past.

    And the plume is known to have two heads, one southwestwards and one northwards. So perhaps this is the explaination. And perhaps Greip happens to be very near the location of the plume.

  15. Hamarinn and largest inflation in Iceland: I have a possible explanation. In a word, Veidivotn.

    Perhaps Hamarinn is the origin point from where magma spring along the Veidivotn dyke. Just like Bardarbunga-Kistufell is the origin for Holuhraun

  16. There was some unexpectedly strong geomagnetic storming today and may be again over the next few days with more CME arrivals expected. NOAA discussion below.

    https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/text/discussion.txt

    While the nature of what transpired in the solar wind this reporting
    period is highly speculative and uncertain, density signatures and
    temperature profiles also corroborate transient arrival and passage.

    .Forecast…
    Analysis suggests the transient influences from 14 May may be from
    an unobserved, earlier CME, and may not be the early arrival of the
    CME events from late on 10 May. Because of the uncertainty involved from
    what transpired on 14 May and what was originally anticipated, the solar
    wind environment is still expected to become enhanced and disturbed
    again on day one (15 May) with the anticipated arrival of the CME events
    from late on 10 May. Later on day two (16 May) another CME observed on
    12 May is expected to arrive, further enhancing solar wind parameters.
    Early on day three (17 May), yet another CME that took place on 13 May,
    is expected to effect the environment and cause another disturbance in
    the solar wind field.

    ….Forecast…
    The geomagnetic field is likely to reach G1 (Minor) storm levels, with a
    chance for G2 (Moderate) levels on day one (15 May) in reaction to CME
    effects. Day two (16 May) is likely to respond with storm levels up to
    G2, with a chance for G3 (Strong) due to expected reactions from another
    CME. Day three (17 may) is likely to experience up to G1 storm levels,
    with continuing chance for G2 conditions in response to yet another CME.

    • I hope I’m not too OT, but if you are lucky enough to be in the right place there may be a chance to see another display, so just a timely heads up 🙂

      http://www.spaceweather.com/

      SURPRISE STORM SPARKS AURORAS IN THE USA: A surprise geomagnetic storm erupted during the early hours of May 14th when a crack opened in Earth’s magnetic field. Solar wind poured through the gap, igniting auroras over northern-tier US states. Paul Nelson photographed the display from the shore of Lake Superior near Marquette, Michigan:

      “The auroras were bright enough to see reflected in the still waters of Lake Superior,” says Nelson. “The ISS made a visible pass during the best part of the show, right across and above the Northern Lights.”

      Auroras were also sighted in Ohio, the Dakotas, and Wyoming.

      At its peak, the storm reached category G3–one of the strongest in years. The storm is now subsiding, but more storms are likely this week in response to a series of approaching CMEs.

      • Annoying that it’s now, the nights are waay to bright this far north now, oh well there was some decent showings this winther.

        • Totally agree! I was driving home in the middle of the night, heading straight north with a good view of the sky in front of me. Fully aware of the current conditions, I was scanning the sky for auroras. Sadly, the sky never went dark enough for any aurora spotting.

      • The picture from Ohio is less than an hour drive from my parents! They’ve been notified to take a peek in the next couple days. Secretly hoping for some more while I’m in Oregon next week! Would tick off another bucket list item to witness aurora borealis.

    • It would be really interesting to see the peer review on that. It looks compelling, but then, hokum is supposed to be. I do like that the logic behind the contents and origin is grounded in stuff that is actually possible and sensible.

      • Carl Ambryms lava lakes may be gone for quite a long time .. with a supply thats much lower than Hawaii. Ambrym may be without lakes for many decades right?
        Ambrym is totaly silent now…. both marum and benbow and melebewsu lakes are gone and collapsed. The 3 small lakes are gone
        It is as nothing was there at start either

        • I don’t know what the supply to Ambrym is, but it has been historically an open conduit so the lava lakes or other activity shouldn’t stay gone for long.

          • There is already a slight thermal signal from the hot fumaroles on ambrym, while not observed at night some of them are probably hot enough to glow. I expect a new lake to form somewhere this year. If you contrast this to kilaueas much more easy to observe deep pit it also has hot fumaroles but they are not incandescent, it will probably take longer for a lake to reappear there but who knows at this point and I could be completely wrong looking back in a years time.

            Also there was actually an eruption underwater on ambryms rift zone during all of that too, new basalt tephra washed up on the shore over the new year.

          • LoL “black ops video game interrogator voice”

            Where is the information for that thermal signal Turtlebirdman?
            I cannot see any thermal signas on any satelites for now…
            What instrument are you using?
            Give the link here 🙂

            Yes some of Ambryms fumaroles have been really roaring suggesting high gas jetting and magma is very close to the surface
            When they begins to glow magma column is just meters under.
            This recent video from Ambrym haves very loud fumaroles magma is close to the surface https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHEXx0sbfnY

            Ambrym haves a very high magma supply for a subduction zone volcano maybe even similar to Etna
            The magmas rise very quickly from the source and comes up basaltic and hot 1150 C I think

          • Jesper it was actually those same extremepersuit guys but on their facebook account, about 3 weeks ago at the same time they made that video. I think they used the volcanodiscovery satellite heat maps to find that. They said it was enough to show some yellow squares which I think is somewhere enough to glow at night but not as hot as molten lava or a forest fire which are both red on those maps.

            The stuff for kilaueas hot fumaroles is from HVO about 5 weeks ago they did a thermal cam overflight and posted a picture. There are no glowing spots in visible light there so no heat visible from orbit but it is still well over 100 C.

            Also to answer the question further up, according to a study in 2016 the amount of gas emitted by ambrym (one of the highest of any volcano on earth) means it has a supply rate of 25 m3/s of basalt magma, which is more than twice as high as my number for hawaii during pu’u o’o, and almost as high as the whole of the vatnajokull area even using Carls most extreme figures and accounting for every variable of where the magma comes from… However that number was from comparing directly to hawaii, ambrym is fed by a subduction zone while hawaii is a hotspot, so naturally ambrym will have way more volatiles per unit of magma, and there is a lot of sulfate and carbonate in ocean sediment, as well as halide ions in the water, to give it a massive boost in all of those things that wont happen at a hotspot.

          • Ambrym outperforms Kilauea on the CO2 front by a factor of 3. That is probably a reasonable indication for the steady-state magma inflow (with as problem that the magma doesn’t seem to go anywhere in Ambrym – it doesn’t erupt or inflate. very strange). But Ambrym is itself outperformed on CO2 emissions by Popocatepetl and by Nyiragongo: the last one produces twice as much as Ambrym.

          • I rember Charsten Peters expedtion into Ambrym almost 20 years ago. I was just a kid and read that national geographic article a few years later…. This was charstens first really big volcano expedition

            These old night photos where amazing… they climbed down into Marums floor.
            When the lava lake was just forming
            There where enromous glowing abysses in the pit walls that roared with 30 meters almost transparent flames. Mordor came true
            He stood and photographed himself there
            Perfect place for satanic coktail party….
            Very very impressive sight it was almost 20 years ago I think
            This abyss goes right down into the partial melting zone.

          • I remeber these Mordorish Ambrym photos being much older than copyright 2005…..
            I was born 1995
            Charsten peter was focused on his goal and he got there…
            In 1968 Etna had a similar hells mouth

          • I have been looking at that study from 2016 and it is very interesting. They have analyzed 38 samples of lava from diverse types of activity to find the gas content of Ambrym’s lava from the inclusions trapped in olivine crystals. And apparently while Ambrym emits as much as 12% of global volcanic SO2 and is also an important emitter of others, its lava gas content is actually low compared to other basaltic volcanoes, it apparently does require of a supply of 25 m³/s, which turns out in ~0.8 km³/year, which is 4 times the long term supply to Hawaii Island.

            While the output of Ambrym is not known considering its poor historical record and particularly if submarine eruptions like this year’s have gone unnoticed, 0.8 km³/year is probably much more than it erupts, the authors propose that the magma chamber is continuously overturning so new fresh magma is arriving having their gas depleted and sinking back.

            Also, the trace element distribution of the magma is similar to that of MORB basalts with a minor contribution of subducted slab melt. Then it is probable that volanism of Ambrym (and other Central Vanuatu volcanoes) is driven mainly by spreading with some help from the subducting plate.

          • Carl your opinion?
            Paper says 0.8 km³/year supply for Ambrym!!???
            How the heck is that possible !

            There is no large decompressing hot plume head there

            This is a subduction zone ….
            maybe the subducting slab is very fertile in partial melting
            Still IF this is even true I am astonished
            How old is Ambrym then:..???
            If the edifice island formed very quickly I can accept it

            If the Island is older than Kilauea or Etna I will not accept this ..
            size and age gives a clue to magma supply …

            But it coud be that Ambrym just started this enormous supply after the major VEI 6 or 7 caldera event earlier.

          • I guess then there is probably two factors to consider regarding how productive a volcano is in its eruptive output. Basically the supply rate of a volcano that we see is actually the true supply rate (through CO2 emissions) minus the amount that circulates back down. For hotspots I imagine this ratio to generally be very low which is why kilauea erupts a lot of lava and can overflow for years non stop at its base rate, but subduction volcanoes might be very different.

            For popocatepetl it is not basaltic so it makes sense to have high gas emissions relative to output, and nyiragongo and nyamuragira are above a massive emerging mantle plume that will probably do big things in the near geological future so that also makes sense.

            The only other thing I can think of for ambrym is that it is somehow the only vent in a wide area that magma can degas through, so its supply is not necessarily that high but it is degassing a huge area. Ambrym is not generally a big erupter, sure it has done its big caldera event 2000 years ago that was huge, but its eruption rates in historical time are completely dwarfed by kilauea. Really the fact it is dominantly explosive despite being made of the same lava that erupts in hawaii is a mystery in itself unless you assume it is much more volatile rich. Even the effusive eruptions on ambrym that are still very mafic hot tholeiite basalt are more ashy and explosive and viscous looking than fissure 17 which was a degassed and reheated andesite of the same composition as the lava domes on sinabung…

          • Aaaaa it haves to do with the extreme gas content of Ambryms magma .. all the sediments and water transformed to gas at depths from the slab…
            This gas nucleation is what drive the magma upwards so fast

            The true mantle supply to Ambrym is likley quite low

          • According to the paper the lavas of Ambrym are alkali basalts and have a composition of 50-51% SiO2 which is in the SiO2 range of what Kilauea usually erupts.

          • Ambrym’s magma gas content seems to be lower than average , this is an extract from the publication (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377027315003273):

            “the volatile-richest melt inclusion in Ambrym basalt, trapped in olivine Fo83, contains 1.2 wt% H2O, 0.102 wt% CO2, 0.073 wt% S and 0.043 wt% Cl (Table 5b), i.e., a total volatile amount of ~ 1.4 wt%. Such concentrations are modest compared to those of many other arc basalts worldwide which, for instance, commonly contain ~ 3–4 wt% H2O and ~ 0.3–0.4 wt% CO2”

            I guess the explosive activity could be due to interaction with water, torrential rains are frequent in Ambrym. In the video Jesper linked of Benbow there seem to be two small pools of water on the floor of the caldera, so it might be waterlogged.

          • If it is alkali basalt it basically proves the magma feed rate is relatively low, if it was high like they say it would be tholeiite basalt. In hawaii alkali basalts erupt at the dying volcanoes because the amount of magma generation outside the mantle plume is too low to make tholeiite.

          • Yup if its alkaline basalt… its signs of low degrees of partial melting…
            The 0,8km3 supply can now be scrapped for Ambrym

          • Nyamuragira one of the most productive volcanoes worldwide erupts basanites, highly alkaline basaltic lavas. Transitional alkali basalts have been erupted from Hekla and Katla, having about 4.5% Na2O+K2O the magma of Ambrym would also be transitional alkali basalt. In Hawaii it seems to be simple, but there are more factors involved in the generation of alkali magmas.

          • The African Superplume feeds it… the worlds largest mantle plume
            The plume is just surfacing under the litopshere.
            All hell will break loose once the plume head starts large scale.. decompression melting as it acends into upper astenosphere.

            The next major LIP is due….and world bouces back into greenhouse phase

  17. We have some more tremor on the big island associated with a quake.

    2019-05-15 09:08:04 2.3 38.

    Looking at the seismographs around the island it is visible on most. Looking at the 12 hour graph for TRAD there may have been some more.

    This was 9:08 to around 9:30 UTC

    Mac

    • And again

      M 2.4 – 15km SSE of Pahala, Hawaii

      Time: 2019-05-15 11:49:02 (UTC)
      Location: 9.083°N 155.401°W
      Depth: 39.3 km

      • From HVO weekly update:

        “Since early March, tiltmeters at the Kilauea summit have recorded modest inflationary tilt. Over about the same time period, a GPS station within the 2018 collapse area has recorded approximately 5 cm of uplift.”

        • Quite to be expected after an eruption. Pressure normally starts to rebuild quickly with fast inflation that slowly tapers off back to bakground levels.
          This is what has happened at Bardarbunga for instance, now it has even tapered off into deflation.

          • Mauna Loa now with a 3.2

            M 3.2 – 30km E of Honaunau-Napoopoo, Hawaii

            2019-05-15 16:18:14 (UTC) 19.464°N 155.579°W -1.8 km depth

            And the tremor back up again on seismos.

          • Having a supply of almost 0,2 yearly Im soure Kilauea will come back soon enough. There been quite alot uplift in Halemaumau 5 centimeters so far since Fissure 8 runned dry.
            Its the shallow magma body refilling
            But there been no extra elevated sulfur yet.. the magma is too deep for that to boil out the shallow melt yet. Only co2 gas for now that bubbles out at great depths.
            Both Halemaumau and ERZ shows signs of refilling and inflation.
            There been uplift in south parts of caldera and upper ERZ.
            Puu Oo also been swelling again… but its shallow plumbing system is crashed. But the 1983 – 2018 Puu Oo ERZ feeder system is molten and active at depths. But crashed at shallow deoths.

            Still even in sleep Kilauea release around 100 tons of Sulfur every day
            A sign its melting huge ammounts of magma from mantle perdriotite.
            Under Fissure 8 s peak it was 50 000 tons of sulfur daily.

            We will never know what will happen next…
            Now back to Greip

          • The tiltmeter at Byrons Ledge is showing inflation now which wasn’t in January but the GPS at the same location shows no change neither are other summit GPS from their respective post-eruptive trends, I guess the new episode of inflation must be very localized at Halema’uma’u, the only station within the collapse area at Halema’uma’u is CALS which is the one HVO must be referring to, but the long term data from that one is not avaliable at the HVO page.

            And Jesper, the Upper ERZ and South Caldera have been steadily deflating after the eruption, no uplift there. Since September swelling has been taking place at Halema’uma’u (5 cm upwards at the northwest caldera rim, at CALS I don’t know) and the Middle ERZ (about 20 cm at Pu’u’o’o to 15 cm downrift close to Highway 130)

          • There was also a smallish earthquake swarm between 0.3 and -0.4 km depth relative to sea level along the northwest caldera fault, it happened on april 21, and might have something to do with this. Its the first time ive seen an earthquake swarm like it since the ring fault quakes last year and this is also outside the 2018 caldera.

            It seems that something very similar to 1961 is happening now, inflation restarting after about 10 months of flat tilt following the 1960 eruption, . If it keeps going it will probably accelerate and small or not so small summit eruptions will happen during this, maybe many in short succession and some time later the pressure will be enough to have a flank eruption. That took 7 months in 1961 but it will probably take longer now.

          • This, it is at the same sort of depth as the shallow system was, about 800 meters below the lowest part of the pit.

          • Jesper, a good general rule of thumb is that if you know the magma influx rate, then you can calculate that against the amount erupted and you get the minimum time until next eruption.
            Guess why Grimsvötn has been sleepy this time around?

            Anyways, if that holds true for Kilauea we can expect 5 years of nap time. So far I see nothing indicating that it will not pan out, the inflation is still minute compared to eruptive deflation.

          • There is the wild card of most of the volume of the deflation (possibly all of it) being through physical collapse of halemaumau, the last time that happened (1840) there were no records of tilt to compare to today, 1960 was a total of about 0.35 km3 of magma leaving the summit, but there was no collapse so all that 0.3 km3 of deflation was in general stress field deflation of the whole area around the summit.
            Now last year there wasnt much of that at all, once the ring fault formed the rest of kilauea pretty much didnt move and it was like a nice neat system. Still, the eruption volume is probably slightly larger than the caldera (0.8 km3 vs 1 km3) reflecting on the rest of the rift also storing some magma, so there is a gap still, not a 5 year gap though more like a 1-2 year gap. 5 years until something big though at least, no flank eruptions until that hole is filled in.

          • Let’s leave it there for now before dragons get woken up…

    • I am not surprised at them finding a large eruption at the APVC. For being at APVC it was just a small cuddly campfire eruption…

      • APVC is of such a dignity that I once coined the term Hypervolcano™ to describe it. When something has supervolcanoes as vents then it is a Bad Boy in deed.
        So, comparatively a 170km3 eruption is more like a geyser erupting in that context.

        • APVC s depths is becomming slowly a giant granite batholith
          But its now huge ammounts of ryholite and dacite magmas
          When souch a gassy batholith in eruptible state… comes to close to the surface
          Its then we gets a VEI 8+ tephra tuff blow out
          That happens rarely last time Toba

        • That one is alarming. I believe you wrote an article about it several years ago, it was excellent.

          Has any of it erupted recently (i.e. in the last 1000 years)?

          • Yes, there has been eruptions there in the last 1000 years, from the side vents of the side venting supervolcanoes thankfully.
            The one to really keep track of is obviously Uturunku, one of the two most rambunctious “supervolcanoes” that we have around.

        • The APVC is really interesting, but honestly, the entire back-arc of the Andean volcanic systems have produced enormous eruptions. The APVC is traditionally viewed as being in the region most centered around Bolivia / northern Chile.

          With that said, there are some downright enormous caldera systems far south of the traditional APVC region. Many of these are widely unstudied or have very poor pr agents.

          For example, there is a 30x45km caldera in the region (caldera del atuel), and the Calabozos caldera is 14×26 km and is a perpetual VEI 7+ eruptor. Long story short, there is some very large volcanism that has gone on in the high andes across regions, and relative to the scale, there is not all that much publicity given to this region.

          • Quite correct, APVC is just the plum in the cake, but there are a bunch of other goodies there.

          • I agree, Calabozos could use some more studying and there are a lot of other large systems in the area. Like Cerro Blanco, the VEI 7 volcano, is feeded from a different volcanic system south of the APVC, the Incahuasi magma body containing an estimated 13000 km³, it also feeds other volcanoes such as the 20-30 km wide Laguna Amarga Caldera complex and Nevados Ojos del Salado. But the APVC is just way too insanely big containing about 500000 km³ in its magma chamber is really in a diferent scale but it also an old volcano 11 My old so there are other younger caldera systems elsewhere that are smaller but more active.

      • I thought it was pretty normal to have something like the APVC inside a mountain range that formed due to long duration subduction, its like the sierra nevada batholith that was formed in the exact same way in the late cretaceous. Actually it is almost exactly the same geological setup (mountain range with volcanoes, then depressed back arc valley that would be a shallow sea if the ocean was higher, equivalent to the west interior sea 80 million years ago).

        I dont really know but it sounds like the really big magma body is probably the silicic equivalent of something like kilaueas deep rift, or the boat shape you describe for grimsvotns magma source, technically it is eruptible magma meaning it can erupt if you put it somewhere near the surface, but there is no way you will actually get it all to go at once or something like that would have happened before somewhere. Probably it will just stay there forever, feeding its army of smaller volcanoes until eventually the subduction zone stops as the pacific ocean is consumed, after which it will slowly cool, turn into a batholith, that will be exposed in the center of the next supercontinent in 250-300 million years or something like that (at least in the novopangea model that happens).

        • It’s probably going to do an “upside down” version of California’s San Andreas when the East Pacific Rise gets there. This is basically the same set-up that the Farallon plate and North American plate had 30+ myr ago. In that case, the AVPC will likely become exposed as did the granite batholiths of Yosemite National Park. They are effectively the same thing described above, but with the mountains eroded away.

          … and wouldn ‘t you know it. Uturunku is about 415 km from the edge of teh subduction zone… Yosemite is about 233 km from the San Andreas. (The San Andreas is the transform fault that is left over from when the spreading center of the Farallon-Pacific plate spreading center went under. Given a slight variation on subduction angles, easily an analog that both systems share. Not to mention that the region of the Pacific Plate on the western side of the San Andreas has now moved a few hundred Km to the north, an even better fit to my argument. (parts of Washington and Oregon are believed to have formed in the vicinity of Mexico.. and the Monterrey Underwater Canyon is thought by a few geologists to be a feature made by the Colorado river before it was cut off and gained it’s current path. The fertile agricultural regions in and south of the Salton Sink (El Centro, Brawley etc) were formed by periodic inflow to it from the Colorado… about every 500 to 600 years. The current lake was formed accidentally in 1905 when work crews opened up the Colorado to it.)

          From Wikipedia: “One dominant theory holds that the [Monterrey] canyon is a remnant of an ancient outlet of the Colorado River which once existed before the Gulf of California opened up about 7.9 million years ago.” And yes, that means that the Baja Penensula is an accretion terrane much like Vancouver Island and the Siletzia terrane are. Yes, this is a throwback to my ‘bugs on a windshield‘ post a few years ago. Only with a giant set of wiper blades called the Pacific Plate smearing them across the face of he windshield (the North American plate).

  18. Another swarm at Greip today. Waveform is visible not only at DJK and DYN, but also on several stations outside Vatnajökull.

        • That periodic signal again. Larger amplitude today, but still nothing on neighbouring stations. Glacial movements sounded like a plausible cause.

        • I am 99.0 percent sure that it is glacial slides caused by increases water emission (nothing to do with Greíp).

        • Side note: looks like the plot has been rescaled if you compare the current plot with Ian’s screen dump. I thought IMO never rescaled the drums, but maybe they changed that policy.

          • On some of them the system rescales things on auto-setting. I do not think that IMO has given much thought to it.

          • I just recalled from discussions about quake sizes during Holuhraun, that someone, possibly swedish, said that the IMO drums were never rescaled. My memory could be failing me.

          • Someone of a possible Swedish disposition does not need to worry about his memory. The other person who is possibly of the Swedish perversion did indeed say that, and it was true back then.
            I think it came along about a year ago with a software upgrade or some such. But it does not rescale as wildly as at other places.

            Ska vi prata om erövring av byar i Miklagård eller något bara för att frustrera resten? 🙂

          • Varje gång vi vill erövra något kommer det en norrman och säger att vi inte får… 😉

          • Det är en från färöarna, som mixer svensk/norsk skriftsprog, som säger att ni inte får 😉

          • Sweden is often written off as a frozen nightmare

            But persons forgets the Warm Gulf Stream … that makes winter in Sweden 30 to 45 C warmer in winter than Northenmost Canada In same latitude

            Even Malmö is same latitude as the polar bears in Hudson Bay
            Yet milded enough to grow grapes

  19. Yay Grits!

    (Due to scheduling weirdness I happen to be awake now. Just as planned.😁 )

    • Quietly ruminating upon grits.
      Best grits I had was at Malone’s near the airport in Atlanta. The Chef served them with a mean hotly spiced shrimp stew thingy.
      But, what I really miss from the south here in Sweden is deep fried ‘gator (do not trust a chef who doesn’t pronounce it “gayder”). It is almost warm enough here in south Sweden to implant alligators in the creeks here. I think I have a project one of these days. Ahem… 🙂

      • I won’t touch gator, but it is a available at the grocer.

        Like Bear, you have to cook it as well as you would pork or you stand a chance at hurting yourself.

        • Hence the deep fried status on my plate…
          And I only trust chefs named Cletus who is married to his cousin and who only owns denim overalls with one strap broken… Either Cletus will blow up the cooker, or it will be safe to eat.
          Cletus’s wife Billy-Sue Bob made a mean coleslaw and the ice-tea was heavily spiked with the sheriffs own shine.
          Cletus sister had somehow ended up in mission control at Cape and invited me over to a family dinner…
          What happens in Mississippi stays in Mississippi.

          Bear is unedible however you cook it. It is the most stringy funky tasting meat ever created.
          I have a rule, if it is not grazing I do not eat it. With the obvious exception of the gator.

  20. The USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has been named a finalist for a 2019 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals (Sammie) award based on our response to the 2018 eruption. Described as the “Oscars” of government service, the Sammie winners will be announced October 16.

    HVO is one of five finalists in the Science and Environment category. But there is also the Sammie “People’s Choice Award” — and your votes will count! (From usgs facebook page)

    I just voted for them. You can visit the link below and on the right side of the page you will see Tina Neal listed.

    https://servicetoamericamedals.org/peoples-choice-award/

    • Voted, glad I could spread it out on the ones I’m most impressed with. Had to include USCG since they tend to save every ones arse no matter what.

      • USCG are worthy of praise.

        I will never forget their words when one of their cutters found me after I had surfed a wave in a Hurricane off your neck of the woods… “Are you alive”?. -“No.”

  21. Well, as Karel already said way above, they have now confirmed the birth of a new volcano 50km east of the coast of Mayotte. 0.8km high, 4-5km in diameter, 3.5km under the sea surface, fluid release reaches about 700m under the sea surfaces where it disperses. There are 2 ‘pictures’ circling on twitter ( @RLacassin ); I’ve got no clue how to copy them here, so if anybody could?
    This basically means that the EQ-signal that went around the globe last year, was actually / probably from this edifice. So in relation to this newly discovered volcano, I guess the pipe-theory of Carl is downright amazing.

    • A cone with those dimensions has a volume of 2.5 km3, and that is a minimum value too because there is probably some lava around the cone. If it has been going for a year that is an eruption rate of 78 m3/s, which if it was on land would look like fissure 8 between surges, it is probably a big cone because the lava cant flow a long way that deep, so it builds up around the vent.

      • Pierre Briole, a french geophysicist inferred the start of the eruption from seismicity and deformation to have taken place past July 3. That would be 10 and a half months into the eruption now.

        • About 92 m3/s then in that case, which is similar to holuhraun, fissure 8 and sierra negra 2018 averages (84 m3/s, >127 m3/s and ~101 m3/s respectively), and in line with a gravity driven eruption, even if this one is not a caldera collapse.

          Interesting how there have been 4 of these sorts of big effusive eruptions in the last few years and 3 of them were simultaneous in July last year.

          • There is seemingly no central Mayotte volcano involved here though, the deflating source is at a depth of ~28 km, and located more or less under the vent. It is a deep intrusion here so I don’t see how this fits the gravity driven model valid for Holuhraun or Kilauea.

          • No shallow magma, but there is still a lot of mass above the magma source, which would presumably have the same result if a hole is made somewhere for the magma to escape.

          • DustDevil is completely correct, this is not a gravity driven eruption.
            Instead it seams like the french has quenched a longstanding conundrum… I will get back to it one of these days in an article.

          • Holhuraun had av avarge of 200 cubic meters a second after the spectacular over 1000 start
            Around 1,4km3 was erupted by Holuhraun and alot more remains inside the dyke …
            Eruptive rates dropped alot in Holuhraun as it went by
            Leilani had an avarge of 100 cubic meters a second and substained that for around 2 months!

          • Holhuraun is one of the largest lava flows at once every photographed on camera and is my favorite eruption so far… until something bigger even faster basaltic happens
            Here is Holuhrauns 1200 C hunderds of meters tall fountain
            The photographer felt the thermal radiation in the helicopter
            This was feeding a 20 km long open lava channel that was flowing towards herdubreid … feeding massive Aa fronts.
            The lava was very hot and extremely gassy
            Sulfur Gas smell was felt in Norway during that time of photography.
            https://www.ruv.is/frett/norwegians-smell-sulfur-from-holuhraun

          • Jesper 84 m3/s is what the average of holuhraun is through volume x duration in seconds, it erupted for 180 days, and erupted somewhere around 1.3 km3 of lava from what I have seen (1.4 is close enough though). It was much faster at the start but evidently it was not later on at some point, the last month or two was pretty much just a very long lava lake and the effusion rate was probably not much higher than 20 m3/s when news crews started flying drones around it in January. Probably over half of holuhraun was erupted in its first 6 weeks. Contrast this with fissure 8, which erupted 0.8 km3 in 69 days, it was never really enormous but it stayed pretty much the same rate all through until the last day, the average was well over 100 m3/s from fissure 8, somewhere closer to 150 m3/s, with a maximum of around 300 m3/s on May 27-27 and some surges in mid July where the channel near the vent overflowed. Sierra negra last year was like both of them, it was really strong at the start probably well over 1000 m3/s for the first few hours but then the lowest vent opened and all the others stopped, and it all stayed pretty much the same around 70-100 m3/s until it ended, except there was no big caldera collapse because of the trapdoor effect it has with its caldera. That eruption was about 0.4 km3 in 57 days.

            I cant really find any data on the new mayotte volcano anywhere except general articles of its existence, how do you guys know where the inflation is located? Everywhere I have seen is talking about it as though it is like fissure 8 in the deep sea and with a long dike feeding the vent.

          • Here is more photos of Holuharun near its peak strenght..
            This totaly dwarf Fimmvördahls… and much hotter too
            This stuff comes almost directly from the Iceland Hotspots head.
            Mixed with alot of Bardarbunga magma too.
            Almost as large old Aa lava Channels can be found in Reykjanes in Google earth if one looks closely… One day Reykjavik is gone
            https://www.google.com/maps/@63.9395407,-22.1276833,27172a,35y,180h/data=!3m1!1e3

            http://www.photovolcanica.com/VolcanoInfo/Bardarbunga/Bardarbunga.html

  22. A little indigestion on the big island. There is some tremor also.
    2019-05-17 09:30:21 2.2 39.6
    2019-05-17 09:19:07 2.4 44.3
    2019-05-17 09:18:47 2.3 42.2
    2019-05-17 08:01:32 2 41.6
    2019-05-17 08:00:18 2.1 37
    2019-05-17 07:57:06 2.4 38.1
    2019-05-17 07:56:19 2.3 41.1
    2019-05-17 07:53:06 2 43.5
    2019-05-17 00:35:11 1.8 32

  23. Pingback: Greip update (June 2019) | VolcanoCafe

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