2013-12-28 10:26 UTC
No new data to report but we hope that we will be able to have a clear satellite picture a little later. We are curious to have a look at the ocean water of yesterday’s quakes. These were relatively shallow (there was one from 8 km (the depth of the ocean floor in this area is approx. 3 km)). We remind our readers that the coloring of the see with toxic ingredients started in 2011 before the shallow eruption earthquakes occurred. When the NASA MODIS pictures are available, we will bring them to you.
2013-12-28 08:58 UTC
No more spectacular earthquakes during the nightly hours.
The New deformation data is showing a somewhat identical picture than yesterday. Stabilizing (or slightly increasing) horizontal and vertical deformations in the El Golfo area and mid-Island stations BUT continued lifting and/or horizontal movement of the El Pinar and La Restinga GPS stations. Lets hope IGN or PEVOLCA will give their views on this in a report later today.
New today is the HI10 station (until today, HI10 was not present on the deformation maps). HI10 (El Julan area) shows the same strong increase than El Pinar and La Restinga, even more as the total lifting deformation since the beginning of this crisis is 10 cm!
What does this mean ? It means that there is still a magma source below the south-eastern part of the island, but without generating earthquakes.
Something else we suggest is that, because of the stabilized western GPS stations, IGN was right in stating that the strong earthquake from yesterday afternoon may have no direct relation with the lifting of HI08, HI09 and HI10.
Does the continued south-eastern deformation will lead to more earthquakes in that part of the island – not necessarily as even more lifting in other places did not necessarily led to earthquakes neither. One additional reason to say this is that, though the lifting was strong at El Pinar, La Restinga and El Julan, only the greater El Pinar area lived through a swarm of earthquakes.
The next hours and days will be “tension” days as everybody will be searching for more clues.
Geofon Germany has published the focal mechanism of the M5.1 earthquake and this shows a strike-slip earthquake (see image below)
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link to earthquake-report.com]