Whats going on at yellowstone?

Very interesting and I so wish I knew what it signified

4 tremors all within 12 minutes. One at 37km depth??

Are getting deeper or was that a glitch, even if they are only 2.somethings

edit cause it's late and I've had too much champagne

[edit on 1/1/09 by redhatty]

Yeah I wanted to sleep but checked the graph and bam its going crazy. Im also using GEE to see it in differeny time lapses. Checking that against this:

vulcan.wr.usgs.gov...

I know they mentioned something like it might be a new fault line? Are you kidding me? A new fault line right on top of the magma chamber, yeh nothing to worry about lol. I figure they can get a picture of whats down there by the activity based on the time it takes to hit all sensors.

I dont believe they are going to show us. Especially if it was bad. I dunno if they have geophones setup but you could also get a picture that way.

[edit on 1-1-2009 by Memysabu]

and another one just.. gets buizzy now..

Looking back 24hrs, most of the depth readings remain fairly consistent, circa 2.0km and a minority at around 4.0 - 4.9km. Is the 37km reading a glitch? If a true reading, what's going on at that depth?

More magma moving up into the caldera?



[edit on 1/1/09 by logicalview]

reply to post by logicalview

Could be a glitch. If not, it's certainly a bit strange.

That latest run of quakes appears to be in the region of or between LKW(Y) and YNR, as the traces are stronger at those two than at YFT. If we had YML running we'd get a better picture but without it we can only guess. The larger ones look similar to most of the 3-range quakes that have been recorded lately.

Meanwhile, just for the record, I've made an image that shows which Yellowstone helicorders are active (ie tracing) at the present time. I think it's interesting to see where they are. (Please note that this image is only a jpeg copy of the U 0f Utah original and is not clickable.) Legend for circles: yellow circle around helicorder marker indicate it's currently active. Black circle indicates it's currently inactive:



(Original image from U of Utah. Reduction and graphics additions by author of this post. Reproduced for informational purposes only.)

Regards and Happy New Year,

Mike

The whole Earth is shaking, but it does every day. If you would like to see, the whole earth, with all earth quakes, go here;

www.iris.edu...

Sorry for being a bit dumb,but can anybody tell me what chain of events or sequence (warning signs) would we have to see that would really get the scientists worried.At the moment there does seem to be sustained activity but at a low scale.Thanks in advance for all your input on this very interesting(and a bit worrying) thread.

I have found this news piece from 2005 ,quite interesting
news.sky.com...


[edit on 1-1-2009 by tarifa37]

reply to post by JustMike


Thanks justmike.

Lets hope we dont lose any more active stations eh!

Well, one things for sure we will all be a lot more knowledgable in the area of seismology by the time this things over (which way i'd certainly not like to say a the mo).

Good to see everyone giving this current event it's well deserved respect!

reply to post by tarifa37


Not a dumb question at all. I for one am on a steep learning curve with regards this topic. And i suspect most posters on this thread are too.

I doubt we will get any information from the scientists until they know themselves what the data is saying. Although, should things take a turn for the worst.... well, i'll let you decide.

Does anybody think there will be seismologists today willing to review earthquake data and add it on this page? I hope yes, most EQs occurred yesterday and the day before yesterday weren't big enough to trigger the automatic detection filters and therefore they haven't been added to the list yet.

reply to post by tarifa37

I'd classify as "dumb" the people who don't ask questions because they prefer to remain ignorant. Your question is very reasonable.

Warning signs or (if we want to be a touch more scientific vis-a-vis volcanoes) "precursors" would in this region include unusual or unexpected changes in water levels in lakes, ditto temperature changes, "bubbling" (gas release or venting) either seen in that lake or venting from the ground, significant changes in the eruption periods or characteristics of geysers, and a rapid increase or change in the height of the "dome". Some of these can obviously be directly observed, others have to be determined by studying data collected by sensors of various kinds.

The same goes with the helicorder (seismogram) data. The traces are studied by experts to look for signs of significant volcanic/magmatic activity and of course quakes which might be caused by this activity, and also, for the past twenty years or so, they also look for indications of what are called "long-period events" which are a special "signature" indicating pressure buildup and that can indicate if an eruption is imminent. In fact, this indicator is very important. If it is present and the number and period of these "LP" events are on the rise, then they would be worried.

For info about why these LP events are so important I'd recommend a couple of sites that will give you the basics of them in a few minutes, direct from Dr Bernard Chouet, the scientist who discovered their significance and first used them to predict impending eruptions with great accuracy. The first is an interview with him where he discusses what it all means, the second (longer) text is the transcript of a BBC "Horizon" special about volcanoes and predictions, which details the first time his methods were used and what the consequences were.

Interview with Dr Bernard Chouet

BBC Program: Volcano Hell

I would expect that Dr Chouet is studying the data from Yellowstone with great interest. After all, he is probably the best authority in the world on long-period-event precursors.

Regards,

Mike

Uh oh, look out, pretty big one just hit, sensed far north of there, yikes...will have to wait and see...looks like it could be a 3 or better...

event at 12:51 or so, watch for it on LWKY coming up

[edit on 1-1-2009 by TrueAmerican]

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Yep! 2.7 it seems:

2.7 2009/01/01 05:51:24 44.548N 110.361W 0.2 60 km (38 mi) ESE of West Yellowstone, MT

I think it will be revised later though. The EQ report says version #0 (usually it's at least version #1).

reply to post by Shirakawa

Only my opinion, of course, but for what it's worth, I think they're able to add the data, but whether they are willing or not might depend on how much they feel it might alarm the public, most of whom know zilch about this sort of thing and who would be easily panicked because of "doomsday" programs like "Supervolcano". There's also the political aspect of all this, as others have mentioned before. Hard to divorce politics from the decision-making process as to what gets published and what doesn't.

Just as a side note, most of the Yellowstone helicorders are still down, it seems.

reply to post by JustMike


Thanks again for a useful and informative post.

I've been trying to look at ground deformation data on top of the caldera but the graphs i've found cover approx 6 years and don't really show an accurate picture of recent changes ie. the last couple of days.

Do you know of any site that shows the most recent readings in this time scale?

Thanks.

reply to post by logicalview

No problem..glad to help

For a fairly up-to-date set of graphs, you can use the Yellowstone Continuous GPS page. I posted it about a day ago but this thread is busy so it was easy to miss.

Just click on a station and you'll get the updating graphs for E/W and N/S movement as well as height. (The last one called the "Up" graph.) Because of the scale they use it's still hard to get very precise data but it's about as up-to-date as I can find and at least shows what the trend is.

At the moment the trend for the area we're concerned about is "Up". In other words, it's rising.

Mike

PS I believe it updates with each completed orbit set of the gps satellites they use. So, it's pretty regular.

[edit on 1/1/09 by JustMike]

reply to post by JustMike


Thanks for your point of view, but I really didn't mean to be that deep
I was thinking more that January 1st is a holiday in most countries with celebrations lasting until early morning in some cases. Even scientists need a break sometimes, I think

reply to post by JustMike


Once again many thanks justmike.

Going to take a while now to do some research with the links and info you have so diligently provided.

Regards

reply to post by Shirakawa

No problem...Sorry about that!

Yes, the New Year is a factor for sure (no argument! ), but if I were a seismologist over there with access to all the data you'd have to drag me away from my desk... I can bet even if they're home they'll be watching this pretty well all the time. This is such an unusual event I'm sure some of them are already rubbing their hands together at the thought of all the research papers they can write...

Point taken, though.

Cheers,

Mike