Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

weatheriscool
Posts: 12971
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

Updated casualty figures:

TURKEY
38,044 dead, 108,068 injured

SYRIA
5,801 dead, 14,803 injured

TOTAL
43,845 dead, 122,871 injured
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Earthquake Scientists Have a New Tool in the Race to Find the Next Big One
February 16, 2023

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) An everyday quirk of physics could be an important missing piece in scientists' efforts to predict the world’s most powerful earthquakes.

In a study published in the journal Science, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin discovered that a frictional phenomenon could be key to understanding when and how violently faults move. That’s because the phenomenon, which explains why it takes more effort to shove a heavy box from a standstill than it does to keep it moving, governs how quickly the fault surfaces bond together, or heal, after an earthquake. A fault that is slow to heal is more likely to move harmlessly, while one that heals quickly is more likely to stick until it breaks in a large, damaging earthquake.

The discovery could be key to understanding when, and how violently, faults move. That alone won’t allow scientists to predict when the next big one will strike — the forces behind large earthquakes are too complex — but it does give researchers a valuable new way to investigate the causes and potential for a large, damaging earthquake to happen, the authors said.

“The same physics and logic should apply to all different kinds of faults around the world,” said the study’s co-lead author Demian Saffer, director of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics at the Jackson School of Geosciences. “With the right samples and field observations we can now start to make testable predictions about how big and how often large seismic slip events might occur on other major faults, like Cascadia in the Pacific Northwest.”

To make the discovery, researchers devised a test that combined rocks from a well-studied fault off the coast of New Zealand and a computer model, to successfully calculate that a harmless kind of “slow motion” earthquake would happen every few years because the clay-rich rocks within the fault are very slow to heal.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/980049

Of related interest: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/979928
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Why Were the Turkey and Syria Earthquakes So Damaging?
by Jessica Colarossi
February 13, 2023
(Futurity Here, she (Rachel Abercrombie, a research professor of earth and environment at Boston University) puts the cascading devastation into context, and talks about why the region is at high risk for earthquakes and what can be done to warn people about an impending shake before it’s too late: https://www.futurity.org/earthquakes-tu ... h-2873912/
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
Xyls
Posts: 689
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 9:20 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by Xyls »

BREAKING:

Another 6.4M earthquake just hit the Hatay region of Turkey.



Reports of buildings collapsing again.

Last edited by Xyls on Mon Feb 20, 2023 7:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Xyls
Posts: 689
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 9:20 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by Xyls »

Shake map is showing different areas at risk for this one per the USGS. Preliminary estimates from this earthquake are suggesting somewhere between 100-10k fatalities likely. This was a very shallow earthquake. Hopefully, this is on the low end... but we will have to see. Any damages compromised in the previous earthquake are likely coming down in this one. Potentially up to 100 million dollars in damage.

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes ... jqcn/pager





Update:

weatheriscool
Posts: 12971
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

Scientists have discovered a new core at the center of the Earth
Source: Washington Post

Back in my day, there were only four layers of Earth: the crust, mantle, liquid outer core and solid inner core. Now, scientists have revealed a new, distinct layer within our planet’s inner core, which could help inform the evolution of Earth’s magnetic field.
Want to know how your actions can help make a difference for our planet? Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

In a new study released this week, a pair of seismologists at the Australian National University documented new evidence of a 400-mile thick solid metallic ball at the center of Earth’s inner core — like the smallest figurine of a massive, planetary Russian nesting doll set. The new layer consists of an iron-nickel alloy, like other parts of the core. But it has a different crystal structure that causes shock waves from earthquakes to reverberate through the layer at different speeds than the surrounding core, the study found.

“Clearly, the innermost inner core has something different from the outer layer,” said Thanh-Son Pham, lead author of the study. “We think that the way the atoms are [packed] in these two regions are a slightly different.”

Researchers study the inner core to better understand Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us from harmful radiation in space and helps make life possible on our home planet. Geophysicists surmise the inner core could have formed less than a billion years ago, which is relatively young on a geologic time scale. The study authors explain the inner core grows outward by solidifying materials from the liquid outer core, releasing heat and creating convection currents. This convection generates Earth’s magnetic field.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- ... llic-ball/
weatheriscool
Posts: 12971
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

Source: AP

By GONZALO SOLANO 26 minutes ago

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — A strong earthquake shook the region around Ecuador’s second-largest city on Saturday, killing at least one person, damaging homes and buildings, and sending panicked residents into the streets.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 in the country’s coastal Guayas region. It was centered about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Guayaquil, which anchors a metro area of over 3 million people.

The South American country’s emergency response agency, the Risk Management Secretariat, reported one person died in the Andean community of Cuenca. The victim was a passenger in a vehicle trapped under the rubble of a house.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/ecuador-eart ... a3b81f01ea
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Study Re-evaluates Hazards and Climate Impacts of Massive Underwater Volcanic Eruptions
April 11 , 2023

Introduction:
(Eureka Alert) Material left on the seafloor by bronze-age underwater volcanic eruptions is helping researchers better understand the size, hazards and climate impact of their parent eruptions, according to new research from the University of British Columbia.

Roughly 3,600 years ago, the eruption of a semi-submerged volcano in the southern Aegean Sea devastated the island of Santorini, injecting ash, rocks and gas into the atmosphere and depositing kilometres of sediment in terraces on the seafloor.

The catastrophic eruption, and others like it, have traditionally been associated with abrupt climate shifts. But the minor climate impacts of more recent underwater volcanic eruptions, like that of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai in 2022, have put that theory in doubt.

Now a multi-year study of ancient Santorini volcano deposits is unravelling the nature of these massive caldera-forming eruptions, and providing new clues as to how future eruptions might impact Earth’s climate.

During massive eruptions, volcanic eruption columns pass through shallow seas as jets of ash, rocks and gases that rise tens of kilometres into the atmosphere. But exactly how, and how much, of that material is then delivered to the sea surface or ground has remained unclear.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/985502
Our findings enable an explicit classification of submarine caldera-forming explosive eruption dynamics and quantitative estimates of eruption rates from their terraced deposits.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01160-z
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by caltrek »

A New Study Finds That the Magnitude of the 2023 Turkish Earthquake Matches the Largest in its History
April 10, 2023

Introduction:
(Eurekalert) On February 6, 2023, two powerful earthquakes successively occurred in Turkey, resulting in significant damage and loss of life across southeast Turkey and northwest Syria. As a fundamental parameter, their magnitudes are of great interest to the scientific community and the general public at large.

Currently, reported magnitude results for the two events have significant discrepancies, and the difference in magnitude between them is highly uncertain (between 0.1 and 0.4), which requires further revisions.

Aiming to address that gap, a team of researchers led by Professor Xiaodong Song of Peking University used a novel and reliable long-period coda moment magnitude method to measure the magnitudes and relative sizes of the two events.

“The moment magnitudes obtained were 7.95 and 7.86, higher than the other published results," shared Prof Song, who is the corresponding of the paper. "The first mainshock was slightly stronger than the second with an estimated difference of 0.11. This corresponds to one of the largest tremors in over 2,000 years of Turkish history."

Furthermore, the researchers found that the two large earthquakes were rare large continental earthquake doublets—two or more large earthquakes occurring in close proximity and at short time intervals—as such events occasionally occur in subduction zones and rarely on the continent. The pair of earthquakes also appear to be the most powerful doublet ever to occur on land.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/985631
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8733
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Geology, Earthquakes & Volcanism News and Discussions

Post by wjfox »

Tonga volcano explosion equalled most powerful ever US nuclear test

Fri 14 Apr 2023 19.00 BST

A huge underwater volcanic event in Tonga last year was of a magnitude comparable with the most powerful nuclear detonation by the US, researchers have revealed.

Scientists have used eye and earwitnesses accounts, along with data from tide gauges, satellites, evidence of broken windows and other sources, to calculate that the eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, which occurred on 15 January 2022 and was felt around the world, likely involved five blasts. The last of them released energy equivalent to about 15 megatonnes of TNT.

That is around 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, and puts the volcanic event on a par with the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the US: the Castle Bravo bomb detonated at Bikini Atoll in 1954.

The team, based at institutions in the US and New Zealand, added that the volcanic event, which occurred 65km (40 miles) from the country’s main island, involved both eruptions – which resulted in huge volcanic plumes being thrust into the stratosphere – and explosions of steam, which caused sonic booms and were the main cause of the related tsunami.

The researchers’ computer simulations of the event, based on a combination of data sources, suggest the western coast of Tofua Island experienced waves of up to 45 metres in height, a result they say is backed up by signs of vegetation scars at the same altitude captured by satellite and drone data.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... clear-test


Image
Reuters
Post Reply