TREMOR

Project "TREMOR" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

Take a look of project's partnership.

Map

 Project objective

A small eruption in Iceland in 2010 had a big impact on the economy, airlines, and people in Europe and worldwide. Forecasting eruptions and mitigating their effects requires better understanding of the precursory signals and their detection amongst other signals. One of the key geophysical signals is volcanic tremor which is observed before and during eruptions but is only phenomenologically interpreted. The project TREMOR, based at the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) and the University of Cambridge will exploit their extensive, multidisciplinary databases including recordings of recent eruptions and floods. It will overcome present shortcomings, such as badly constrained tremor locations through use of new location techniques, dense seismic networks and small source-receiver distances. These improvements are made possible by the FUTUREVOLC project (FP7, 2012-2016) which expanded existing networks in Iceland shortly before the Bardarbunga 2014/15 eruption. Preliminary results during the researchers PhD suggest that both pre-eruptive and eruptive tremor exist during this eruption and have different characteristics. The TREMOR project will continue from this point with the objectives to (i) systematically search for pre-eruptive tremor, (ii) characterise it with respect to eruptive tremor and other tremor sources such as floods, glaciers and hydrothermal boiling, (iii) find factors that affect its characteristics and (iv) understand the source mechanism better. If TREMOR is successful, pre-eruptive tremor can be introduced as an eruption precursor, not only with direct application at IMO, but potentially worldwide. This thorough study will form the basis of future research, as it will be disseminated through conference presentations, publication in peer-reviewed journals and communication to the public. It will further train and integrate the researcher into two effective, experienced, multidisciplinary research groups to strengthen professional maturity.