Whats going on at yellowstone?

reply to post by SpadeofAces


Morning all.
It has been a long work haul.
I'll play for giggles.
But I say something sizable NE of Boise.
All kinds of theories out there.
I'll try the equal distance one .

Cheers

I think we're seeing a teleseism right now from something small and in the Intermountain region.

Let's see if I'm right.

First wave came in at 17:08 UTC, second wave at 17:09.

Nope, so far it looks like it was probably something small and local to the Lake area. Probably we won't see it on the map until Monday.

[edit on 16-1-2009 by quakewatcher]

reply to post by sugrbare03


Yea we talked about the steam thing yesterday and I do believe there is more steam. - Regarding the snow around the geyser and in Yellowstone in general... there isnt so much snow around at the moment. However it isnt that gold either. I am currently living in Sweden pretty far north and it is very gold etc etc. But like 10 years ago also here it would be much more snowy and even colder than it has been the last 5-10 years.

Sometimes it is cold and sometimes it is not that gold on earth. What I am trying to say is, that I do not believe that we can make anything of that except from the water itself. Tempatures/steam/fires etc etc.

- However I must admit that the cam: www.nps.gov... & www.nps.gov... look like the snow is melting rather fast even that it is 7 F - 9 windchill today. Ohh and look at all the steam right now.. but this morning like 5.00 am your time there was not much steam.

Did anyone care to comment on my: www.godlikeproductions.com... ? I still find it strange. Last numbers missing is: 2007: 47 QUAKES 6.0 AND ABOVE
2008: 35 QUAKES 6.0 AND ABOVE.

Also www.iris.edu... i really like the link to earthquake news but it the Seismon itself any good you think?



[edit on 16-1-2009 by Wrathier]

reply to post by questioningall


Absolutely!! I have been watching the cam since Dec. and there seems to be an increase in steam and less snow even though it has snowed recently and that arctic front came through. When I first started watching, Old Faithful was barely putting out steam between eruption times. Now there is a constant flow of steam. Hmmmmm.....

reply to post by Moshpet
Hi Moshpet,

the fact that these odd "pipecleaner" traces have come back doesn't surprise me but it sure concerns me...

What follows is for anyone and I hope it'll offer a useful perspective to this conundrum. Well, if not useful, at least interesting:

In my pulse "analysis" post (part three) back on page 260 I wrote:

Summary: these “pulse” traces have been showing up on the LKWY helicorder for several months, at least since late July of 2008. In the earlier instances, they were patchy and very weak compared to the most recent days’ traces, and sometimes they vanished altogether. There have been occasions where they have grown stronger then disappeared again, but it is only in the last few days that they have developed this pattern of shorter intervals between events and also, it seems, a trend towards longer events. Even if these “pulses” disappear again, the evidence I have presented here shows that it in no way means they will not resume: quite the contrary, the pattern of activity indicated by the “pulse” traces strongly suggests that each time they return, their intensity increases and the activity goes on for a longer period of time.

Bolded italics and underlining added for this (ie current) post.

I'm thinking that if this latest re-emergence of these anomalous traces was due to some change in calibration to improve sensitivity, then the previous examples that I refer to in the posts on p.260, would also have been due to a similar cause, because they also exhibited a gradual increase in apparent strength of whatever the device was picking up. Seeing as there is no such relative change apparent in the background/cultural noise picked up, I'd be dubious that any such changes in sensitivity had been made. It is certain that the webicorder's scale has been left at 500 microvolts throughout -- at least since July 2008, which is as far back as I've studied it in any great detail. I also would suggest that the anomaly's apparent increase in strength would not be due to moving an "interfering" piece of equipment closer. After all, if the thing's creating interference and it can be moved, then it makes more sense to move it further away.

As I said back in those posts, I couldn't find any firm correlations between these strange pulse or pipecleaner traces (or "caterpillar" traces -- that's what they look like now ), and the recorded data for outflow from Yellowstone lake. That data seems to correspond more with overall activity recorded on the webicorder traces throughout the park.

But here's an interesting observation: when the "caterpillars" reappeared last time on Jan 3, it was just a short time after the mag 5.9 Afghan quake was detected on the Y'stone webi's, and on the same day as the high mag 7 quake in Indonesia. Before that event, they were barely discernible. But they didn't come in strong right away like they did this time. On Jan 3 they are just beginning and look like anorexic worms. On Jan 4 they're getting stronger, and by Jan 5 they're pretty obvious. Late on Jan 6 they begin to fade, and as has happened before, they are replaced/swamped/whatever by "other" activity.

This time, these anomalous traces re-appeared not long after the powerful mag 7.4 quake in the Kurils was picked up on the park's seismic equipment, but became stronger much sooner and are larger/more evident than they have been on any previous occasion, as yesterday's LKWY page clearly shows. Notice that at 21:16 MT on yesterday's (Jan 15) page, there is a "normal" quake that starts during one of these anomalous traces and that it is apparently picked up by the machine quite okay.

If the traces follow the previous pattern, they'll continue for a while and then either the trace will go blank/fizzle out (as has happened a couple of times before, including last time) or they'll be swamped by "other" activity (and then maybe go blank/fizzle out anyway), or something unexpected might happen.

Just to finish I'll say that it has me flummoxed. I know the argument that if it's natural then it ought to be picked up on other sensors, and for me, that's about the only saving grace to the argument that it might be a glitch or interference of some sort.

Regards,

Mike


[edit on 16/1/09 by JustMike]

reply to post by Hx3_1963


and your conclusion is ??? I haven't seen any machine /drill noise on that link, is there a secret place that I have not yet found

Abstract Title
Effects of the Yellowstone Hotspot on the Geodynamics of the Western U.S. Interior
Abstract Author
Puskas, C. M. (1)
Flesch, L. M. (2)
Smith, R. B. (1)
Settles, K. (1)
1. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
2. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Abstract Text
The Yellowstone hotspot is a key tectono-volcano feature of the western U.S. interior. We modeled both regional deviatoric stresses and strains to identify the effects of the hotspot. The stress model is derived from new crustal thickness data provided by the EarthScope Transportable Array and a new Yellowstone-Snake River Plain gravity-density model. The crustal structure was used to obtain a detailed model of mass distribution in the lithosphere, allowing the calculation of the gravitational potential energy and deviatoric stresses. The stress model predicts rotation of tensional stress axes from E-W to NE-SW between the Basin-Range and Yellowstone-Snake River Plain. as well as shear stresses in the eastern Snake River Plain and Columbia Plateau. The deformation model, derived from a compilation of GPS, Late Quaternary fault slip rates, and seismicity, reveals a notable clockwise rotation of velocities in the western interior. This rotation is attributed to a combination of sources: 1) intraplate stresses from lithospheric mass variation producing westward extension in the Basin-Range, 2) intraplate stresses from the hotspot producing southwest motion in the Yellowstone-Snake River Plain province, and 3) interplate stresses between North America and the Pacific and Juan de Fuca plates cause northwest shearing and eastward compression, respectively. The stress and deformation models are compared by calculating the average effective lithospheric viscosity as an indicator of crustal strength. The effective viscosity, regional seismicity, and Late Quaternary tectonic history were then used to identify fault-bounded microplates in the western interior. These models indicate that the Yellowstone-Snake River Plain behaves as a separate block moving to the southwest. From these modeling results we conclude that the Yellowstone hotspot causes a regional rotation in the stress and strain directions that affects a large area of the western U.S.

Call for open talks:
Abstract Title
Geodynamics and GPS/Seismic Imaging of Yellowstone (Invited Talk)
Abstract Author
R.B. Smith, W. Chang, C. Puskas, J. Farrell, K. Settles and M. Jordan
Department of Geology and Geophysics
University of Utah
Abstract Text
The Yellowstone hotspot is a major source of active volcanism, seismicity, regional deformation, a large positive geoid anomaly, and the driving stress of a large part of the western U.S. The high elevation, low gravity field, and accompanying geoid anomaly of the Yellowstone volcanic Plateau is the site of current hotspot volcanism that due to buoyancy forces from low-density upper mantle and crustal material. We take as an ansatz that Yellowstone active volcano-tectono processes are driven by crustal magmatism that in turn is fed by a mantle plume. These topics have been the focus of an integrated NSF Continental Dynamics funded geodetic and seismic experiment that served as a proto-type EarthScope project. Tomography revealed low-velocity, low-density crust and mantle under much of the Yellowstone volcanic field. This anomalous lithospheric composition is attributed to modification associated with Basin- Range extension and crustal thinning, as well as locally high deviatoric stresses from mantle buoyancy forces. Quaternary magmatic activity has reworked and replaced much of the crust, most notably through crustal melting and intrusions that result in a partially-molten magma chamber beneath the Yellowstone Plateau. The reworked crust has relatively lower density that adds to the local gravitational potential energy (GPE), leading to some the highest stress gradients in the western U.S. interior. Regional deviatoric stresses are dominantly tensional, corresponding to ongoing extension at the Yellowstone Plateau as observed by GPS measurements and L. Quaternary fault slip rates. A stress model modified by densities derived from seismic images allows the quantification of relative hotspot stress contributions from velocity-mass variations in the upper-mantle and crust and a geodynamic model of the system. The Yellowstone caldera has experienced decadal-scale uplift and subsidence of up to 2 cm/yr since 1923, but has recently begun an accelerated uplift episode of up to 7 cm/yr, from 2004 to 2008 deduced by GPS and InSAR measurements. The accelerated deformation was modeled as magmatic sill expansion at the top of the crustal magma body.
Seismically constrained crustal gravity models account for the large negative 60 MGal gravity anomaly of the Yellowstone Plateau that implies active crustal magmatism ~20 km NE of the mapped caldera. From seismic imaging, a west 60°-dipping plume of low velocity was revealed that extends to the bottom of the upper-mantle transition is modeled both for its density contribution to the geoid as well as the dynamics of the body. The integrated geodynamic model reveals a low buoyancy flux upper-mantle plume with relatively low temperatures, ~ -150°K that accounts for the buoyant uplift of the Yellowstone Plateau. The deviatoric stress solution is combined with deformation models to estimate a stress field boundary condition and to quantify effects of relative plate motions. We account for effects of large earthquake post-seismic relaxation and determined the long-term deviatoric stresses and modeled instantaneous strain rates that revealed SW motion of the Yellowstone-Snake River Plain volcanic system that adds to the E-W extension of the Basin-Range. These models confirm the profound effect of the Yellowstone plume and the crustal magma system on the regional deviatoric stress field, and the predicted high stresses explain the observed high strain rates and high seismicity of the region. 



Abstract Title
Geodetic and Seismic Constraints on the Accelerated Uplift in the Yellowstone Caldera, 2004-2008
Abstract Author
Taka’aki Taira, Wu-Lung Chang, and Robert B. Smith
Abstract Text
Yellowstone is one of the world’s largest active caldera systems where a modern network of the PBO GPS and borehole strainmeters as well as the University of Utah seismic array, including broadband seismographs, is deployed. This unique integrated research network provides insight into the physics that governs the processes of the Yellowstone deformation and seismicity.

The Yellowstone caldera began unexpected uplift with the rate of up to ~7 cm/year in mid-2004, revealed by continuous GPS and InSAR measurements. The observed rapid deformation was modeled as an inflating 60 km by 35 km sill located at a depth of 10 km beneath the Yellowstone caldera and coincident with the top of the tomographically imaged crustal magma chamber. In 2008, the caldera has continued moving upward at similar to slightly lower rates as the past year.

On 5 November 2007, a M=3 event occurred on the southeast side of the deformation area, ~8 km above the inflating sill, where positive (expansion) dilatation changes are expected from the inflating sill. First-motion polarities of P and S waves combined with S/P amplitude ratios obtained from seismic data strongly suggest that the source of this event includes a notable explosive component in addition to a shear failure. The estimated explosive source mechanism is consistent with the expected positive dilatation change in the source area, derived from geodetic data. Waveform modeling of broadband seismic data also suggests an explosive source mechanism for this event. We suggest that a pore-pressure change (or a fluid migration) activated by the inflating sill encourages an explosive-source for this earthquake.

Two tiny itsy bitsy quakes at the lake..
I dont like the pipecleaner patterns; they dont make any sense and if you all cant explain them I really dont like em..

USGS says last night's quake had nothing to do with the Yellowstone earthquake swarms:

www.wyomingnews.com...

This seems more than plausible to me given the location near an unrelated fault.

Temp 1/15/08 @ 6:00 a.m. CT where I live--(-29F) i.e. frigid. Dense fog in low lying areas. Hope that answers a few questions I read a few pages back.

I emailed Dr. Jake Lowenstern about our pipecleaner thingy last night, this is his response:

I'd guess it is electronic garbage, probably related to the telmetry, but I suppose it could be a manmade signal. Definitely not natural. Best to ask UUSS and see what they think, as they are most familiar with these sorts of things.

Sorry I can't be definitive, but I'm not a seismologist, and unlike some of you, I am not obsessed with every bump and wiggle:-) If it doesn't show up on more than one seismometer, it isn't worth a whole lot of attention. Besides things like pumps and trucks and snowmobiles and wind, there can be problems with the telemetry signal, so there are a variety of ways you can get irrelevant signals. Pretty cool teleseism associated with the Kurile EQ today, huh?

(By the way, I introduced the word "obsessed" - in relation to me - in my email, he's not making fun.)

As long as it isn't on neighboring stations I'm going to try to ignore it. But it is hard, when you've been looking at these things for weeks, to not try to read something into it.

Originally posted by quakewatcher
As long as it isn't on neighboring stations I'm going to try to ignore it. But it is hard, when you've been looking at these things for weeks, to not try to read something into it.

Agreed.

Originally posted by quakewatcher
As long as it isn't on neighboring stations I'm going to try to ignore it. But it is hard, when you've been looking at these things for weeks, to not try to read something into it.

Agreed.

reply to post by geogeek


there is another reasonable possibility here that I just thought of:

what has weather been doing lately ?? if the ground is water saturated , and the temperature has dropped, possibly we are seeing the ground freezing around geophone resulting in far better coupling of geophone to the compressor energy along the propagation path of the ground surface .... this would result in higher amps during these times ...

in the seismic industry (in Canada) it has happened several times that I am aware that a company will come back into an area (in summer say) that was shot in the winter and find they cannot exactly match the characteristics between the two data sets (even using the same instruments, etc ) so much so that the 2nd survey was considered a near waste when it came time to combine the 2 surveys into one ..

Can somebody see any correlation of below freezing temperature with this phenomena ??

[edit on 16/1/09 by geogeek]

reply to post by quakewatcher
Thank you for the post! Starred.

Okay, so if Dr L. is right, then we need an EE to study this anomaly and perhaps come up with an idea to account for why it appears to have been increasing in strength at irregular intervals over some months, and also why it "fades" before "normal" activity intensifies. I'd be happy to put this worry to bed, to be honest. If it's really just a glitch I reckon we'd all be a lot happier.

Regards,

Mike

reply to post by geogeek
Interesting idea, that, and it makes a lot of sense. Hope you don't mind if I think out loud, though -- not in criticism but in hopes of solving the mystery.

Can you see any tie-in with the fact that the "pulse" signal comes into being not long after a major teleseism? That one puzzles me. And would the ground be significantly more frozen now than it was on Jan 3 through Jan 6? (Okay, I guess it might be.) And if it were a factor of frozen ground, why did the traces increase in strength over about a two-day period last time, but this time the "uptick" period was only a few hours? (But there was still an "uptick" period.)

Regards,

Mike

reply to post by JustMike


need some temperature vs. day of the month plots i guess ........
need some wind direction & speed vs. day of the month plots ,also ........ Can at least kill 2 theories, if nothing else ....

I agree with Dr. L. that is not a seismological signature .. and I agree it needs to be on 2 or more geophones ... it ain't Mother Earth speaking to us ... Might be wise to just ignore the thing and leave it to the Scalar EM theorists to ponder ....





[edit on 16/1/09 by geogeek]

reply to post by geogeek


I am really interested in the water temp.

Would anyone care to give me feedback on my previus post one page back please.

The current most active area of the world in the past two days seems to be those Kuril Islands off the east coat of Russia in the north Pacific.


Yesterday there was a 7.4 mag EQ which we saw was monitored on the Yellowstone equipment a few minutes later.


Since that big one there have been several smaller EQs near these islands. After shocks??

Look at this chart to see what I mean. They started yesterday with this one and are still going on.


2009-01-15 17:49:40.0 46.97 N 155.16 E
40 km depth
7.4 EAST OF THE KURIL ISLANDS

www.emsc-csem.org...

I said this in an earlier post:

I assume these are the pipe cleaner things that have been mentioned?

I notice it's a local phenomena at LKWY. It could be "Ice Worms" or "Ohm Bugs".. To be more serious, cold weather or moisture could be causing an "intermittent" in a solder joint or some other connection creating noise, or it could be a capacitance change in a particular component causing hum, although I think the latter is less likely. The waveform seems to look too tight.

This is the kind of stuff that can drive field technicians crazy...

Of course, I could be totally wrong on this although I've seen lots of this stuff go on at mountain top repeater sites(especially during the winter) for a long time, ever since I started working with radio...

Ric...

To me it looks like garbage.

My answers may not be entirely correct but it looks electronic in nature. I've been a radio and microwave tech for quite a long time.

I'd guess it is electronic garbage, probably related to the telmetry, but I suppose it could be a manmade signal. Definitely not natural. Best to ask UUSS and see what they think, as they are most familiar with these sorts of things.

Sorry I can't be definitive, but I'm not a seismologist, and unlike some of you, I am not obsessed with every bump and wiggle:-) If it doesn't show up on more than one seismometer, it isn't worth a whole lot of attention. Besides things like pumps and trucks and snowmobiles and wind, there can be problems with the telemetry signal, so there are a variety of ways you can get irrelevant signals.

It could also be some intermittent harmonic interference from some radio transmission somewhere. I too, would ignore it. Someone will get there and eventually find and fix the problem.

Hell, maybe all they have to do is kick the ice off the antenna or the connectors...

Regards, Ric...









[edit on 16/1/2009 by raepperle]