Whats going on at yellowstone?

reply to post by Shirakawa


We should also keep in mind the likelihood of avalanches this time of year.
They have been forecast.

reply to post by Shirakawa


Man that's weird! How many microvolts is that?

Originally posted by Jakes51
So, is this recent swarm what the geologists have called the "harmonic tremors?"

No, no harmonic tremors have occurred in this swarm.

Besides that, check out this page for essential information about the ongoing swarm:
volcanoes.usgs.gov...

reply to post by pantangele

I forgot to add that this extra activity is very, very small.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were mostly earthquakes below M0.5-0.8 (some might be bigger).

[edit on 2010-2-1 by Shirakawa]

reply to post by Shirakawa


What is that program you are using to view the quake chart?

reply to post by Shirakawa


Thanks for the heads-up and the link to the USGS. Apparently, they are viewing this recent swarm, as routine at the moment. I know if an eruption was imminent they will wait until the last minute to give an official warning. Can't contribute to civil unrest and anarchy, I suppose? With that aside, do you think these swarms are normal or should more information be brought to bare on the true nature of the recent seismic activity at Yellowstone? Keep up the good work, my friend!

Are you sure that recent YMR activity resulted from the 6.2 Papua New Guinea quake? If that was the case, surely there would be as much registering on nearby recorders yet, looking via isthisthingon it seems to be another event in the current swarm radiating outwards from YMR as per the others?

reply to post by Vexatious Vex


A program called Swarm; but for various reasons I'd suggest you to check out this other program instead:

www.seis.sc.edu...

reply to post by Jakes51


Swarms are relatively normal (more than 40% of all earthquakes occurring at Yellowstone are part of swarms), although this one is larger than usual.
I think when this one will be over and geologists will have analyzed it fully, more info will be added on that page, probably, maybe like the 2008/2009 one here:

volcanoes.usgs.gov...

But I don't think it will turn out that activity is volcanic in nature. Most likely tectonic as they currently state.

reply to post by MoorfNZ


The waves from the M6.2 EQ I'm talking about are the long period ones which arrive when distant strong earthquake occur. Only broadband seismometers lke YMR can catch them properly (unless the earthquake is really strong), and webicorders on the UoU website filter them with a high pass filter. You need to check the raw data or an unfiltered helicorder plot to see them.

[edit on 2010-2-1 by Shirakawa]

reply to post by Shirakawa


OK thanks. I already have GEE, was keeping an eye out for something a little more user friendly is all.

Um, that doesn't look good right now... From the 6.2? really?

reply to post by Vexatious Vex


It's not really more user friendly although it appears to be. You have to know how to set up a connection with the IRIS DMC servers (the same GEE uses) and understand how they work. Also from what I've seen it can potentially overload those servers with requests, which is a bad thing, and to be frank I don't want to take responsibilities for that.

If you monitor many stations at once in a casual way (check new activity/earthquakes as they occur), GEE is actually better by the way (it tiles all charts allowing to scroll between them vertically, autoscales faster). Also it might be my problem, but with Swarm I can't see the amplitude scales in nanometers/s (or similar other measures), only in raw seismometer numbers (counts). This is why I couldn't reply in detail to a related question a few posts ago.

reply to post by Vexatious Vex


IF it's been some extra activity deriving from that earthquake, it's already over.

[edit on 2010-2-1 by Shirakawa]

I would like to point out what is happening at all locations through out the park and more strongly at YMR which may or not be related to the 6.2 in p.n.g. is Not Weather Related (as we have touched on this subject) this time.

NULL and 24 F at Lake Yellowstone, WY
n/a
Winds are Calm. The pressure is 1018.5 mb and the humidity is 71%. Last Updated on Feb 1 2010, 3:56 pm MST.

Or should I say, does not appear to be Weather Related

[edit on 1-2-2010 by Anmarie96]

Or should I say, does not appear to be Weather Related

With a software spectrometer it's confirmed can see that those are definitely very small earthquakes:

In short, instantaneously rising vertical lines like those denote suddenly occurring frequencies, which is typical of local microearthquakes.
The lines with more white color inside themselves are stronger microearthquakes.

[edit on 2010-2-1 by Shirakawa]

reply to post by Shirakawa


awesome!!! - Sorry for the one liner but that is all I have to say for the moment

reply to post by Anmarie96


The one which starts at 00:26 UTC on YMR webicorder, though, is probably some kind of heavy truck/snowplower/snowmobile. Note the ascending-descending wave pattern. Also such signals occur almost exclusively during daytime.

[edit on 2010-2-1 by Shirakawa]

Originally posted by Shirakawa
Those are not harmonic tremors, but the result of what is called "cultural noise".
If you check, they occur the most during daytime in summer holidays. You can verify this by looking at past years.

Ok, this time I'll just take your word for it that they are not HTs. But we really need an answer to this simple question:

Have HTs EVER been detected at Yellowstone, and if so, is there a trace we can look at of them?

The point being that if they have never been detected before, and we know there has been magma movement, especially on a large scale as Robin points out (2004)- then why would anyone ever expect to detect them again as a precursor sign of an impending eruption?

I really want to see trace graphs of previous HTs at Yellowstone. Anyone?

reply to post by TrueAmerican


I don't think harmonic tremors at Yellowstone have ever been recorded. Tremors occur when there's shallow movement of fluid magma and as far as we know, magma deep in the Yellowstone caldera chamber is only partially melt, very viscous, still in place. Magma injections might have happened in past years, however I don't think at a rate fast enough to generate resonances clearly detectable with seismometers. Even if geologically fast, it's still very slow movement. That's what GPS stations and tiltmeters are for.

How do we know that there will be HT before an eruption at Yellowstone? Because that's what happens with most (sorry, can't rule out the possibility of this not happening in some cases) volcanoes when magma rises actively to their vent.

[edit on 2010-2-1 by Shirakawa]

for interesting reading: 1985 news articles re swarm which mentions Harmonic Tremors being precursor.

news.google.co.nz...,2863284&dq=yellowstone+swarm&hl=en

and visual

pubs.usgs.gov... recorded on Nevada del Ruiz Volcano, Colombia, on September 9, 1985

Source: pubs.usgs.gov...

[edit on 1-2-2010 by MoorfNZ]

With a software spectrometer it's confirmed can see that those are definitely very small earthquakes:

reply to post by Shirakawa


Given the size of the volcano, maybe these ARE HT's.... This IS a different animal after all...

reply to post by Selahobed


No.
Harmonic tremors are a completely different thing.
Their most distinctive characteristic is that they are more or less sustained signals with very specific frequencies, not broad band impulses like those.

[edit on 2010-2-1 by Shirakawa]

Shirakawa how long would it take the S waves to get to Yellowstone from Paupa New Guinea? Remember on webicorder, so I'm not really seeing it on any stations in the park. However I think I see it come across YMR.

Do you get anything from YFT?

And respectfully I will be the devil's advocate and argue that this swarm cannot be considered normal or common. I've made the point before that of the 90 or so since 1995, the majority have been outside the caldera and only around 13-14 inside. I don't think all swarms are created equal. The count includes swarms within Yellowstone National Park. The majority of the chamber is under the caldera and to the northeast. The uplift areas basically show where the chamber is actively fracturing the crust.