Elaine Meinel Supkis
An 8.1 earthquake in the uninhabited Kuril Island chain may cause a tsunami if it caused any subsidence in the ocean's bed. For a week before this, many 4.0+ earthquakes shook the same area, centered on the same spot. Also, scientists wonder if certain land formations shaped like chevrons facing the ocean are caused by great tsunamis more than 600' tall.
A tsunami is expected to hit northern Japan and Russia's Pacific coast, the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center says.Japanese meteorologists say a tsunami of at least two metres (6.5 feet) high could hit Hokkaido and Honshu islands after 2110 (1210 GMT).
Warnings are being broadcast on all Japanese TV and radio stations advising people to move to higher ground.
It comes after an earthquake of at least 8.1 magnitude hit the Kuril Islands, north of Japan.
The earthquake struck about 390km (240 miles) east of Iturup, known as Etorofu in Japan, at 1115 GMT, the meteorological agency said.
For the last three years, whenever a mega-earthquake hits, another one follows in a mirror image. The Great Boxing Day Quake in Sumatra followed an 8 mag quake off of Antarctica a few days earlier. But before that quake, the same spot in Sumatra trembled with a series of 4+ quakes. It wasn't a sudden event but rather, it came in the middle of a series of quakes that lasted for half a year.
Since then, it has been growing quieter but the activity is now centered on the islands northeast of Australia which includes a new underwater volcano growing tall enough to reach the surface, and the Kuril Islands north of Japan and off of Siberia's coast.
DATE ----------------------MAG---KM DP--------REGION
5-NOV-2006--11:14:1----8.1----27.7-------KURIL ISLANDS
13-NOV-2006--06:30:33-5.0---29.0--------KURIL ISLANDS
12 NOV-2006--21:27:43--5.9 --47.9--------KURIL ISLANDS
09-NOV-2006 16:17:58---4.5--10.0---------KURIL ISLANDS
09-NOV-2006 04:20:47---4.8--10.0---------KURIL ISLANDS
Since a number of mega-quakes this last few years has twins, I wonder where this twin will pop up. Either Chile, which has been having a lot of 4+ tremors in the north/central regions, mostly off the coast, or...the USA.
Chile has had some terrific tsunamis in the past.
On May 22, 1960, at 19:11 GMT, an earthquake occurred off the coast of South Central Chile. A Pacific-wide tsunami was triggered by the earthquake, which had a surface-wave magnitude of 8.6, an epicenter of 39.5° S, 74.5° W, and a focal depth of 33 km. The number of fatalities associated with both the tsunami and the earthquake has been estimated to be between 490 to 2,290. Damage cost estimates were over a half billion dollars.Aerial view of coastal area on Isla Chiloe, Chile, showing tsunami damage and wave extent. Two hundred deaths were reported here from the tsunami generated just off Chile's coast by the magnitude 8.6 earthquake. The inhabitants, fearing the earthquake, took to small boats to escape the shaking. The trough of the tsunami arrived just 10 to 15 minutes after the earthquake, along more than 500 m of the coast. Upon the return of the sea in a thunderous breaker, all boats were lost. The most serious effects occurred in an area extending from Concepcion on the Chilean coast to the south end of Isla Chiloe.
Aftermath of the Chilean tsunami in the Waiakea area of Hilo, Hawaii, 10,000 km from the generation area. Parking meters were bent by the force of the debris-filled waves. Note the scattered debris and the gutted foundation. In the area of maximum destruction, only buildings of reinforced concrete or structural steel, and a few others sheltered by these buildings, remained standing--and even these were generally gutted. Frame buildings either were crushed or floated to the limits of flooding.
The amazing ability of tsunamis, traveling often quite hidden from view, as a bulge, perhaps, thousands of miles only to rise up suddenly from seemingly nowhere and englulf everything, is something everyone should take seriously. When I was a child romping on the shores of many oceans, one of the warnings we all had were to never sleep on the beach and never turn one's back on the ocean.
I knew as a child, if the ocean suddenly withdraws, the waves reversing or getting suddenly very small and moving backwards more than forwards, to run like hell inland to the highest point if possible. Whenever I do visit a beach with lots of people on it, I see a happy attitude and people cheerfully ignore the ocean in front of them and sleeping on the beach is very common. Since tsunamis are fairly rare, this relaxation is quite normal. But also, dangerous.
It is like lightning: most people assume they won't get hit so they ignore lightning until they get hit. Since it is rather capricious (except for me) this means they can happily go through life playing chicken with a deadly force and survive. But quite a few are killed or injured every year. It never ceases to amaze me to watch people strolling around in thunderstorms. Once, I yelled at a man on the street to run inside, lightning was going to hit the ground really nearby. He ignored me and survived but a man a block away was killed by the lightning bolt I sensed so clearly.
Sporatic events are hardest to anticipate and react. The hardest events to anticipate and react to are earthquake-related. This is because there are few warnings but I believe, if there are more than four 4+mag quakes in less than four days, one should be alert for a much bigger quake.
Normally, there are very few 4+ events worldwide per day but ever since the Great Boxing Day Quake in Sumatra, this has been quite an active earth and we have quite a few such quakes every week. Still, today's quake followed the pattern: six or more 4+mag events right before the big one. And like the Sumatra quake, this was a very shallow event.
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Published: November 14, 2006At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high.
On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction — toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface.
The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago. The wave carried the huge deposits of sediment to land.
It makes some sense. Homo sapiens loves the ocean. Very early on, we lived on the shores of the oceans and scientists think all our outward migrations mostly happened along shorelines during the great Ice Ages and we invented simple dug-outs pretty early on and Australia was colonized by humans using dug-outs around 70,000 years ago. And during all this, several cataclysmic events happened which caused huge tsunamis and since humans don't merely hug the shores but also move well inland, the survivors saw the waves come towering in and were in awe as it killed everyone on the shore.
Which is why Poseidon's wrath was so feared, there are mythological tales of him rising out of the ocean and sweeping people into the deep. The sea god was also the earthquake god.
Madagascar also lies off the part of Africa that is closest to where India passed as it raced north to slam into Asia so spectacularily. I would presume, as it charged by, its geological dynamism caused all sorts of incredible events that caused more than one big tsunami to slosh ashore both on Madagascar and Africa not to mention Asia. Striking the Asian plate must have been quite a series of events that resounded across the entire planet, equal to any large meteorite event.
In an earlier story, I quoted this article:
THE Indonesian earthquake behind the Boxing Day tsunami that killed 300,000 people could be the first of a series of giant quakes that will rock the world in the next 10 to 15 years, scientists have warned.The Mediterranean is among areas at high risk, particularly the coasts of Greece and Turkey, both popular tourist destinations. The scientists are urging the installation of a tsunami warning system there as a matter of urgency.
They found that quakes such as the one in Indonesia can destabilise the whole of the earth's crust, so that one is followed by others, often thousands of kilometres away, within a few years.
We aren't even past the first five years of earth change. When I look at the earthquake map every day, I note levels of activity. When all is still for 24 hours, I then expect a rise in shaking at one point and then a big event. So it has been this week: pretty quiet and then a steady increase in shaking in three or so spots and then a blow-out.
The chevrons facing the ocean in many places on earth probably were caused by mega-tsunamis. Many different things can cause these to happen. Certainly, celestial objects hitting the oceans are a prime candidate. So are sudden dropping ocean floors and volcanic eruptions. We do wonder if global warming isn't also causing a lot of stresses on the ocean floors. After all, more and more water is pouring off of melting glaciers and into the seas and this increases volume which means more weight is being redistributed around the earth while a great deal of ice is no longer weighing down several continents which begin to spring back which means all of the planet must rearrange itself, subterranean speaking.
Here is an article from 2005 about clusters of quakes in Alaska.
Don't look at California. Look at Alaska, espeically Rat Island. The statistics on Rat Island the last 48 hours is very alarming. There were only occassional earthquakes centered on Rat Island since the Great Sumatran Earthquake. But the last two days there were 12, all 4.0-7.0 richter events. This is identical to what hearlded the Boxing Day event. I was watching for a great quake there, checking the monitors on line every two hours that day. Got up twice at night, the second time, sitting all night, watching the data flow in, filled with sorrow for all those lost souls.
I fret about the obvious mega-quake future of California and the entire West Coast. Everyone there is relaxing about this possibility which is 100% certain to happen simply because it didn't happen the day after the Sumatran quake of 2004. But we are well within the 15 year time frame and worse, the even more important 5 year time frame. Japan faces California across the seas. Just last month, we had an unusual earthquake in Hawaii that wasn't volcanic but was plate tectonic. Something is moving and it can't be ignored.
Schwarzenegger is riding high on easy times and rising home values, the drop in housing values is only just beginning to bite in California. He should be warning everyone of this inevitable earthquake and the government there should be taking measures to insure people understand the very vital need to keep at least two weeks of drinking water available in case water is cut off, as it will be, in a great quake running along or athwart the San Andreas Fault complex.
The East Coast can be wiped out by a tsumami, too.
By Ali AyresThe risk of a landslide in the Canary Islands causing a tidal wave (tsunami) able to devastate America's east coast is vastly overstated. That is the view of marine geologists studying ancient landslides in the area.
In typical Canary Island landslides, chunks of land break off in bits, not in one dramatic plunge, they argue.
This contradicts previous warnings that an Isle of Man-sized chunk of land could fall off the island of La Palma into the sea, causing a mega-tsunami.
However, the researchers behind the original claim are sticking to their guns, pointing to evidence of catastrophic past events in the region.
Hoping the volcanoes in the Canary Islands will only shift in increments is wishful thinking. As geologists look at the many wonders of this planet, the realization has dawned only reluctantly, the idea that many things we see today are the results of terrible, huge, unimaginable events, slowly dawns.
Considering how dynamic the earth system is, this really shouldn't surprise us all that much. If the earth were as dry as Mars or crushed by relentless atmospheric gases like Venus, then nothing changes much after a while. But our system is very fluid and dynamic.
And here is a movie of the mega-hurricane with 400 mph winds on Saturn. We can only imagine the weather on this gas giant. Even the moons around Saturn are still quite dynamic as well as dramatic.
Tsunami
Meanwhile, the west coast of the US is tectonically locked up tighter than a frog's butt. The whole "Ring of Fire" has been active since Boxing Day, and here we sit, unmoved.
I think Mother is pissed, and will not be too kind when her fury unleashes.
Posted by: notgonnatellya | November 16, 2006 at 01:25 PM
Hi, this site is brilliant; I've been looking into the Kuril Islands too, where do you get your data from? It's absolutly facianting; is there a myspace or blog-group I could join to read and discuss this sort of thing?
If anyone has any details or info or can recommoned other sites, please email me on:
jdanngeology@hotmail.co.uk
Thankyou for a fascinating site
Jack Dann
Posted by: Jack Dann | November 27, 2006 at 03:44 PM
Hi, this site is brilliant; I've been looking into the Kuril Islands too, where do you get your data from? It's absolutly facianting; is there a myspace or blog-group I could join to read and discuss this sort of thing?
If anyone has any details or info or can recommoned other sites, please email me on:
jdanngeology@hotmail.co.uk
Thankyou for a fascinating site
Jack Dann
Posted by: Jack Dann | November 27, 2006 at 03:45 PM