THE Canary Island of La Palma has been hit by another flurry of earthquakes once again prompting fears the deadly Cumbre Vieja could erupt - just four months after scientists recorded a swarm of more than 200 tremors.
The Spanish archipelago was struck by up to 70 small quakes, recorded between Monday and Wednesday, reaching between magnitude 1.5 and 2.6 on the Richter scale.
Andgovernment officials announced more quakes were felt between 3am and 6.30am this morning at magnitudes of between 2.1 and 1.5.
Most of them were located in the area of Los Canarios, in Fuencaliente, and in El Pueblo, Villa de Mazo, although they have also been registered in El Paso and Tazacorte.
The Canary Government has now stepped in and called for an urgent meeting to take place on Friday to discuss why the quakes are happening again and what might happen in the future.
“Since Saturday, February 10th, the National Geographic Institute (IGN) has located 85 events on the island of La Palma and its surroundings."
However, experts stressed there is no imminent danger of an eruption and say the movements that struck at a depth of between 14 and 30 kilometres are considered "normal" for a volcanic island.
But nonetheless La Palma is being monitored closely to detect every single movement, even though they have not been felt by the public.
Following the quakes in October, scientists stepped up monitoring in the Cumbre Vieja area with more seismic stations and GPS antennas, together with a continuous radon measurement station.
An intense earthquake swarm is taking place at Tjörnes Fracture Zone volcano near Grimsey island, Iceland over the past 7 days. More than 1 100 of earthquakes were detected in this region since Wednesday, February 14, 2018. The last known eruption of this submarine volcano was in 1868.
The largest earthquake so far was M4.1 at 19:37 UTC on February 15, about 10 km (6.2 miles) ENE of Grimsey. "It is the largest earthquake detected in the seismic swarm that began a week ago and is still ongoing," the Icelandic Met Office said late Thursday. EMSC registered this quake as M3.7 at a depth of 14 km (8.7 miles).
A magnitude 3.2 earthquake occurred at 19:28 UTC in the same area, followed by two events above M3, at 19:38 and 19:39 UTC.
There are no signs of volcanic unrest, IMO said. "This area is part of the Tjörnes Fracture Zone and earthquake swarms are common in the area."
More earthquakes, even bigger, cannot be ruled out, the agency added.
A total of 1 165 earthquakes were detected since 08:56 UTC on February 14. 11 of them had magnitudes above 3, 162 between 2 and 3, 951 between 1 and 2 and 41 less than 1.
No comments:
Post a Comment