Earthquake swarm continues on the Canary Islands

July 26, 2011CANARY ISLANDS – The Canary Islands Government has said it is monitoring an earthquake swarm on the small island of El Hierro where in excess of 620 tremors of low magnitude have been recorded in the past week. Earthquakes, measuring between 1 and 3 on the Richter Scale, continued on Monday and more have been registered again on Tuesday. The majority of earthquakes are being recorded at a depth of between 5km and 15 km. The Ministry of Economy, Finance and Government Security Canary has convened the first ever meeting of the Steering Committee and Volcanic Monitoring, reflected in the Specific Plan Protection Civil and Emergency for Volcanic Risk, given what it described “the significant increase in seismic activity.” A statement (translated from Spanish) issued following the meeting outlined: “This committee met (Friday) at the headquarters of the Directorate General Security and Emergency Tenerife, established after the assessment of information gathered from seismic and volcanological last July 17 by the National Geographic Institute (IGN) and Volcanological Institute of the Canary Islands, the situation is total normal for the green light for the information population, activating mechanisms for monitoring and oversight needed to coordinate the actions of self civil population and information contained in the Plan. According to data provided by the seismic monitoring station IGN’s located in Valverde, one can conclude that from the noon on July 17 there has been a significant increase of low magnitude seismic activity in the municipality of Border of the island of El Hierro. To improve the location of this activity, has deployed a seismic network densification operational since July 21 has helped increase the number of earthquakes located, and can be viewed at Web http://www.ign.es/ign/main/index.do”, the statement added. –Irish Weather On-line

8 Responses to Earthquake swarm continues on the Canary Islands

  1. August says:

    Hi. I am from Romania, and have been reading this blog for about 3 months -now. I find it most enlightening, even the majority of the discussions, though I differ on the weight of religion issues.

    Alvin, if possible, I would like to know your opinion about the theory regarding earthquakes – presented in the video below, that is … “post-glacial rebound effects” as one of the MAIN causes of tectonic mo

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound

    Thank you.

    • I do not think the glacial isostaic process or post glacial rebound is responsible for all the earthquakes occurring in the world. Espcially since glaciers only covered certain sections of the globe from the so-called Ice Age and even if it did account for more tremors in the upper portion of North America and upper portion of Europe, lower realm of South America – what uniform force has suddenly awakened the crust everywhere? It accounts for some of the activity we are seeing in regions like the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and some activity in Northern Europe but the majority of quakes are still activated by tectonic plate movements & volcanism in the Ring of Fire.

      Thanks August,
      Alvin

       

  2. luisport says:

    Magnitude mb 5.6
    Region GULF OF CALIFORNIA
    Date time 2011-07-26 17:44:27.0 UTC
    Location 25.26 N ; 109.59 W
    Depth 60 km
    Distances 84 km SW Los mochis (pop 214,601 ; local time 11:44:27.5 2011-07-26)
    84 km SW Ahome (pop 10,806 ; local time 11:44:27.5 2011-07-26)
    66 km SW Topolobampo (pop 7,580 ; local time 11:44:27.5 2011-07-26)

    interesting…

  3. luisport says:

    Earthquake swarm and minor harmonic tremor in Katla volcano
    Posted on July 26, 2011 by Jón Frímann
    There has been a minor earthquake swarm in Katla volcano today. This earthquake swarm started around 09:00 UTC and lasted with breaks until 14:39 UTC. The largest earthquake in this swarm was ML1.7 with the depth of 3.5 km. Following this earthquake swarm there was a small harmonic tremor spike seen on few SIL stations around Katla volcano. It is unknown at this time if there has been a small glacier flood taking place. But if that is the case, it should be known in the next few hours if that is the case or not.

    This harmonic tremor is small, but larger then last harmonic tremor that took place in this are about one week ago (far as I can remember). Currently there is nothing that suggests that eruption is imminent. This is just earthquake activity in the same place as it h

    as been for the past five or so weeks.

    http://www.jonfr.com/volcano/?p=1245

  4. Sajer says:

    I agree with you Alvin its a slow boil. This volcano will erupt theres no doubt its when and how soon. God bless you Alvin keep up the good work.