This Week in Volcano News; Mount St. Helens Earthquakes, Iceland Magmatic Intrusion

As of November 5th of 2023, there are currently 46 volcanoes which are actively erupting around the planet. One of these erupting volcanoes is Russia's Ibeko volcano, which is located on the northernmost quarter of Peromushir Island. This coral island volcano has been producing ash rich phreatomagmatic to volcanian explosions on a fairly frequent basis since its first directly witnessed eruption in 1793. With this being said, here are this week's major volcano related news stories. In the state of Washington, an increased amount of earthquakes have been occurring at the famous Mount St. Helens stratovolcano across the last three months, leading the United States Geological Survey to suggest this was caused by the refilling of its underlying magma chamber. Meanwhile, in Colombia, an unusual earthquake swarm was detected at two volcanoes which are still at a raised alert level, Paracay and Nevado del Guila. And, in what is this week's top story, a moderate depth magmatic intrusion has continued to generate thousands of earthquakes on Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula. This intrusion appears to have begun on October 21st of 2023, when a body of magma presumed to be at 15 kilometers depth on a crust that was centered 3.5 kilometers northwest of the city of Grindvik began its upward movement. For the first 100 hours, this did not generate any notable earthquakes, but this suddenly changed on October 25th. More than 10,000 earthquakes later, it appears that magma is still at around 4 to 5 kilometers depth, where it has seemingly remained in recent days. Yet, uplift which has now reached a total of 5.8 centimeters has continued alongside a fairly strong rate of magnitude 2 or larger earthquakes, which have totaled 272 since the magmatic intrusion began. Magma, in my opinion, appears to be forming a sill with further upward motion at least as of the writing of this video not being actively detected, as cited by the lack of harmonic tremor. However, as further analysis is performed on the Reykjanes volcanic complex, which had produced four other magmatic intrusions since 2020, which all failed to reach the surface and solidified at depth, we may get a better picture of the current situation. Regardless, recent data has suggested that if the ongoing magmatic intrusion was to hypothetically reach the surface and erupt, it would probably originate from a 2.8 square kilometer rectangular region northwest of or on top of a section of Thorbjorn, with some speculating a narrower region of the old crater row called Ila Reyungegur. But, if such a volcanic eruption was to occur, the lava flows it would generate would in my opinion be most likely to travel south-southeast towards Grinevik, and or northeast towards the Blue Lagoon and the Svartzengi geothermal power plant. However, in both cases, lava could be theoretically diverted away from both the town and power plant via constructing new dirt walls to act as barriers. In the state of Washington, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that Mount St. Helens has been undergoing a sustained elevated rate of earthquakes at 2 to 6 kilometers depth below sea level since July 15th, 2023, whereas beforehand the number of earthquakes averaged 11 a week, since then this figure has averaged between 35 and 50 a week. This increase was believed to be caused by the slow refilling of its primary moderate depth magma chamber from an underlying deeper magma reservoir. However, this influx of magma is occurring at levels that are in my opinion too deep in the crust to suggest that a volcanic eruption will occur any time soon. As a result, as of November 4th, 2023, the alert level of Mount St. Helens still remains at green. In Colombia, two volcanoes which are at a raised alert level of yellow showed temporary increases in volcanic unrest during the last 20 days. The first example occurred at the Nevado del Guilo stratovolcano that last erupted in 2012, which just like Nevado del Ruiz is glacier covered with several historical eruptions. As on October 21st, a magnitude 3.6 quake struck at a shallow depth of 1 kilometer at 49 minutes after midnight. Then, over the next 431 minutes, a total of 320 earthquakes occurred in a fairly strong earthquake storm. Then, on October 25th, the Perse volcano which last produced a weak eruption in 2022 also was the site of an earthquake storm, although every quake involved was magnitude 1.0 or less. However, this minor unrest sequence occurred alongside increased degassing, particularly of carbon dioxide gas. Here is a quick list of all the world's volcanoes which are currently erupting. Additionally, here are some volcanoes showing signs of unrest which are not erupting as of the recording of this video on November 4th of 2023. As a final note, I would like to thank this channel's patrons on Patreon, and channel members on YouTube.