Quakes Unfurl Fear Of A Tsunami In Indonesia
COURTESY OF DR JOHN JAMES
By Marianne de Nazareth
15 April, 2012
Countercurrents.org
We watched vicariously on TV, the events unfold on our screen, like we were physically present during the Indonesian earthquake on the 11th April 2012.
“ In a few minutes it will strike the Indonesian coast,” said the BBC reporter and we stared fascinated as the images of people racing out of buildings and rushing to higher ground showed on the screen. Was Chennai going to be hit as well with a Tsunami like 2004, and Sri Lanka as well we wondered? Thoughts of friends and loved ones flashed through our minds. Then Bangalore rumbled,and our house as well and we realised how strong the quake had been. It was a powerful quake, measuring 8.6 on the richter scale and Tsunami watches were issued across the Indian Ocean. However, it was a relief that no damaging tsunami materialised from the tremor or any of its large aftershocks. How and why did that happen was my question and it was interesting to learn how our planet and its plates that we are perched on works, from the experts.
In response to my email query, the global forum of seismologists sent me their comments. British Geological Survey seismologist Dr Susanne Sargeant said, this was because the earthquake was the result of horizontal movement on a strike-slip fault, rather than a vertical displacement of the sea floor. She also sent me an expert commentary from the global network of Science Media Centres, to explain the occurrence and to provide background and context to the situation.
Dr Sargeant, who is a Seismologist & NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow, British Geological Survey, said:
“Critical information that is required to assess the potential for a tsunami is the location, magnitude, depth and faulting mechanism. Tsunamis are caused when vertical displacement of the seafloor occurs. In the case of the 11 April earthquake, an earthquake of this magnitude (8.7 Mw) has the potential to generate an ocean-wide tsunami. However, although the earthquake is relatively shallow and offshore, the data indicate that the earthquake was the result of movement on a strike-slip fault. Strike slip earthquakes are caused when two blocks move horizontally past each other. Such an earthquake would not lead to the vertical displacement of the sea floor that would be required to generate a tsunami. Consequently, the potential for a large tsunami from this earthquake is likely to be low.
“The Sunda trench region is highly active. Earthquakes here are related to subduction of the Indian plate beneath Eurasia. Today’s earthquake occurred on a structure related to the subduction that is occurring here. The tectonics of the region are complex and large earthquakes are relatively frequent. The aftershock sequence has started and this includes an earthquake of magnitude 8.3.
“Although large, the 08:38 UTC earthquake is located approximately 400 km from the coast of Banda Aceh. As such, the potential for significant damage caused by ground shaking is likely to be relatively low although the actual impact of the earthquake in this region has yet to be confirmed.”
Professor Kevin Furlong from Pennsylvania State University is currently in the US and is working with the US Geological Survey on this disaster. He has just returned from a sabbatical as the Visiting Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury (where he experienced first-hand the Canterbury Quakes) and had this to say:
“The 11 April 2012, Mw 8.7 earthquake west of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia is a very large earthquake within the Indo-Australian plate. Although it is within the plate, its occurrence is almost certainly linked to the plate interactions between Indo-Australian plate and Indonesia (part of the Sunda segment of the Eurasian plate). This earthquake reflects a style of faulting (strike-slip) which involves principally horizontal motion, and thus is unlikely to generate a significant tsunami; although very strong ground shaking would be felt on Sumatra. This is also an extremely large magnitude earthquake for this style of faulting, meaning that it likely involved substantial fault movement, and the fault likely extends for 200+ km.
“This earthquake is of the same style of faulting and in approximately the same location as an Mw 7.2 earthquake on January 10, 2012. Although this earthquake was within the Indo-Australian plate, any earthquake of this size will change the stress regimes acting on the nearby plate boundaries. The result is that stress conditions on the subduction plate boundary beneath Sumatra have changed, although the implications of that change are uncertain.”
Adjunct professor at CQ University Kevin McCue, who is President of the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society and Director of the Australian Seismological Centre added to the discussion and said, “According to the USGS website the magnitude 8.7 earthquake occurred well offshore, at least 300 km west of Sumatra so the damage onshore on Sumatra is likely to be minimal. The magnitude may well be decrease to 8.5 or 8.4 after more analysis. The epicentre is well west of the plate boundary and in the Indian Ocean, a fracture along the hinge where the subducting slab of oceanic crust starts bending downward and under Sumatra. The mechanism seems to have been predominantly strike-slip i.e. no substantial vertical displacement of the sea floor so any tsunami would be small and local.”
Dr Bruce D. Malamud, Reader of Natural and Environmental Hazards, Department of Geography, King’s College London, revealed the type of aftershocks Indonesia is expected to experience in the future. He said that when an earthquake occurs, it releases stress that has built up over time, along a fault. However, in addition to releasing stress, it redistributes the stress along that fault, and sometimes these will be redistributed to other nearby faults. In the case of the 11 April 2012 earthquake that occurred off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, the preliminary estimate of magnitude by the USGS is M8.6, and hundreds of km of fault may have been affected. With the redistribution of stress, aftershocks occur, for weeks, to months (and sometimes years) after the main shock. The magnitude 8.6 earthquake will result in aftershocks occurring all along the fault on which the original earthquake occurred. Some scientists say that one can expect aftershocks as much as 1 unit less than the original shock. So in this case, aftershocks of all sizes can be expected, and if as big as a magnitude of about 7.6, it could potentially trigger a tsunami.
The instability caused by the quake, in the area said Malamud, can cause aftershocks, so the problem has not gone away. In response Malmud said that after an earthquake occurs along a fault, stress is released in parts. But then, part of this stress is redistributed to other parts of the fault. This means that they are now more likely to become unstable, with many subsequent earthquakes. Aftershocks can continue for weeks and months after the main shock which is the biggest earthquake in the sequence, sometimes even years.
In response to the question if earthquakes have been more frequent over the last century and are they increasing, Malamud said, “ Let’s take as a ‘large’ earthquake one with moment magnitude 7. The number of earthquakes per year with moment magnitude greater than or equal to 7 varies certainly, year to year, but the average from 1900 to present is about 17 magnitude 7 or greater earthquakes per year (compared to about 1 magnitude 8 or greater earthquake). If we just look at 1990 to 2010, then the average was about 15 magnitude 7 or greater earthquakes per year. And if we look at the last three years, then the average is also 15 of this size earthquake per year. So, no, the actual number of very large earthquakes is not increasing over time. It fluctuates year to year, with some years less and some years more.”
And if you would like to know how much energy is released in a magnitude 7 earthquake and a 9 earthquake, Malamud revealed, the equivalent to the energy released in half a megaton nuclear bomb, is the quantum released for a 7 earthquake. And for a 9, the equivalent of 1000 times the energy released in a magnitude 7 earthquake, or one thousand half-megaton nuclear bombs. If we convert this to energy, this would be roughly enough to power every home in the USA for 50 days.
Although scientists have been trying for many years to predict earthquakes (the when and how big), they so far have not succeeded, but are still working at it, says Malamud. “For a complete prediction, we need to tell people when a disaster will occur, where, and how big. As scientists, we have a good idea of where large events might occur based on written and instrumental records of past events. So for instance, we know that Indonesia is near subduction zones, and that there is an extensive history of earthquakes in the past, so we know that Indonesia is likely to experience earthquakes. Based on these past records, we can also forecast the chance that a given size or larger earthquake might occur, in a given year. This is called probabilistic hazard forecasting, and has been very useful in telling us about how big we might expect, on average, each year. But true prediction is much more difficult, where we tell people that ‘next week there will be an earthquake of magnitude of 9′.
Tad Murty, who is adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Canada said: “If there is a large earthquake far from the ocean, on land, there is no tsunami. The earthquake itself needs to be shallow – some 20 or 30 km below the ocean bottom before it can generate a tsunami, and it needs to be a dip slip, like a subduction. The movement needs to be vertical, not horizontal. In today’s earthquake in Indonesia, the movement was horizontal, because the Indian plate slid past the Burmese plate. In 2004, the Indian Plate went under the Burmese plate, and tens of cubic kilometres of water were suddenly displaced and piled at the ocean surface. This is what causes a tsunami.
Dr Bruce D. Malamud, of Kings College also explained how early warning systems work and said, that there are many different kinds of detectors, and one can never depend on just one set of detectors. First, the earthquake itself has to be detected. This is done by seismographs, and these are done, mostly on land. Earthquake waves propagate through the interior of Earth’s crust, as well as earth’s surface.
We also have ocean-bottom pressure sensors. There are several dozen all around the ocean. They are the first indicators of a tsunami. Then we have tidal gauges, on land but on the coast, put in the water, and they catch the tsunami coming in. By then it’s usually too late.
Indonesia has an early warning system. But all the international agencies work together. They are all part of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and that’s all coordinated by UNESCO.”
In response to the question on whether any changes have been effected in the tsunami warning system since the disaster in 2004, he said, “Following the disaster in 2004, the first early warning systems were placed in the Indian Ocean. With each disaster we learn new things. On the scientific side, we already know the physical principles but we fine-tune our computer models and we make our instruments more precise. The physical process is the same. On the social and economic side, there has been progress, for example, with evacuations.
“When a cyclone hits in the area, almost all the damage and loss of life comes from the storm surge. In developing countries like India and Bangladesh, they use a ‘vertical evacuation system’. Because you can’t evacuate millions of people from the area, the infrastructure and the roads just aren’t there. So they built cyclone shelters on the coast, that are well built and can withstand storm surges and cyclones. In the US, they use a ‘horizontal evacuation system’, because the highways are good and the roads are there so people just move away from the coast.
“In the 2004 tsunami, none of the cyclone shelters in India were damaged. So they thought maybe they could use them for tsunamis as well. Now, if there has to be an evacuation for a tsunami, they use the cyclone shelters.”
The US Geological Survey said the first 8.6-magnitude quake was centred 20 miles beneath the ocean floor around 270 miles from Aceh province. That prompted the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii to issue a tsunami watch for Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Burma, Thailand, the Maldives and other Indian Ocean islands, Malaysia, Pakistan, Somalia, Oman, Iran, Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa and Singapore.
(The writer is a registered PhD scholar and adjunct faculty, St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore)
*with inputs sent by British Geological Survey seismologist Dr Susanne Sargeant
By Marianne de Nazareth
15 April, 2012
Countercurrents.org
We watched vicariously on TV, the events unfold on our screen, like we were physically present during the Indonesian earthquake on the 11th April 2012.
“ In a few minutes it will strike the Indonesian coast,” said the BBC reporter and we stared fascinated as the images of people racing out of buildings and rushing to higher ground showed on the screen. Was Chennai going to be hit as well with a Tsunami like 2004, and Sri Lanka as well we wondered? Thoughts of friends and loved ones flashed through our minds. Then Bangalore rumbled,and our house as well and we realised how strong the quake had been. It was a powerful quake, measuring 8.6 on the richter scale and Tsunami watches were issued across the Indian Ocean. However, it was a relief that no damaging tsunami materialised from the tremor or any of its large aftershocks. How and why did that happen was my question and it was interesting to learn how our planet and its plates that we are perched on works, from the experts.
In response to my email query, the global forum of seismologists sent me their comments. British Geological Survey seismologist Dr Susanne Sargeant said, this was because the earthquake was the result of horizontal movement on a strike-slip fault, rather than a vertical displacement of the sea floor. She also sent me an expert commentary from the global network of Science Media Centres, to explain the occurrence and to provide background and context to the situation.
Dr Sargeant, who is a Seismologist & NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow, British Geological Survey, said:
“Critical information that is required to assess the potential for a tsunami is the location, magnitude, depth and faulting mechanism. Tsunamis are caused when vertical displacement of the seafloor occurs. In the case of the 11 April earthquake, an earthquake of this magnitude (8.7 Mw) has the potential to generate an ocean-wide tsunami. However, although the earthquake is relatively shallow and offshore, the data indicate that the earthquake was the result of movement on a strike-slip fault. Strike slip earthquakes are caused when two blocks move horizontally past each other. Such an earthquake would not lead to the vertical displacement of the sea floor that would be required to generate a tsunami. Consequently, the potential for a large tsunami from this earthquake is likely to be low.
“The Sunda trench region is highly active. Earthquakes here are related to subduction of the Indian plate beneath Eurasia. Today’s earthquake occurred on a structure related to the subduction that is occurring here. The tectonics of the region are complex and large earthquakes are relatively frequent. The aftershock sequence has started and this includes an earthquake of magnitude 8.3.
“Although large, the 08:38 UTC earthquake is located approximately 400 km from the coast of Banda Aceh. As such, the potential for significant damage caused by ground shaking is likely to be relatively low although the actual impact of the earthquake in this region has yet to be confirmed.”
Professor Kevin Furlong from Pennsylvania State University is currently in the US and is working with the US Geological Survey on this disaster. He has just returned from a sabbatical as the Visiting Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury (where he experienced first-hand the Canterbury Quakes) and had this to say:
“The 11 April 2012, Mw 8.7 earthquake west of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia is a very large earthquake within the Indo-Australian plate. Although it is within the plate, its occurrence is almost certainly linked to the plate interactions between Indo-Australian plate and Indonesia (part of the Sunda segment of the Eurasian plate). This earthquake reflects a style of faulting (strike-slip) which involves principally horizontal motion, and thus is unlikely to generate a significant tsunami; although very strong ground shaking would be felt on Sumatra. This is also an extremely large magnitude earthquake for this style of faulting, meaning that it likely involved substantial fault movement, and the fault likely extends for 200+ km.
“This earthquake is of the same style of faulting and in approximately the same location as an Mw 7.2 earthquake on January 10, 2012. Although this earthquake was within the Indo-Australian plate, any earthquake of this size will change the stress regimes acting on the nearby plate boundaries. The result is that stress conditions on the subduction plate boundary beneath Sumatra have changed, although the implications of that change are uncertain.”
Adjunct professor at CQ University Kevin McCue, who is President of the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society and Director of the Australian Seismological Centre added to the discussion and said, “According to the USGS website the magnitude 8.7 earthquake occurred well offshore, at least 300 km west of Sumatra so the damage onshore on Sumatra is likely to be minimal. The magnitude may well be decrease to 8.5 or 8.4 after more analysis. The epicentre is well west of the plate boundary and in the Indian Ocean, a fracture along the hinge where the subducting slab of oceanic crust starts bending downward and under Sumatra. The mechanism seems to have been predominantly strike-slip i.e. no substantial vertical displacement of the sea floor so any tsunami would be small and local.”
Dr Bruce D. Malamud, Reader of Natural and Environmental Hazards, Department of Geography, King’s College London, revealed the type of aftershocks Indonesia is expected to experience in the future. He said that when an earthquake occurs, it releases stress that has built up over time, along a fault. However, in addition to releasing stress, it redistributes the stress along that fault, and sometimes these will be redistributed to other nearby faults. In the case of the 11 April 2012 earthquake that occurred off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, the preliminary estimate of magnitude by the USGS is M8.6, and hundreds of km of fault may have been affected. With the redistribution of stress, aftershocks occur, for weeks, to months (and sometimes years) after the main shock. The magnitude 8.6 earthquake will result in aftershocks occurring all along the fault on which the original earthquake occurred. Some scientists say that one can expect aftershocks as much as 1 unit less than the original shock. So in this case, aftershocks of all sizes can be expected, and if as big as a magnitude of about 7.6, it could potentially trigger a tsunami.
The instability caused by the quake, in the area said Malamud, can cause aftershocks, so the problem has not gone away. In response Malmud said that after an earthquake occurs along a fault, stress is released in parts. But then, part of this stress is redistributed to other parts of the fault. This means that they are now more likely to become unstable, with many subsequent earthquakes. Aftershocks can continue for weeks and months after the main shock which is the biggest earthquake in the sequence, sometimes even years.
In response to the question if earthquakes have been more frequent over the last century and are they increasing, Malamud said, “ Let’s take as a ‘large’ earthquake one with moment magnitude 7. The number of earthquakes per year with moment magnitude greater than or equal to 7 varies certainly, year to year, but the average from 1900 to present is about 17 magnitude 7 or greater earthquakes per year (compared to about 1 magnitude 8 or greater earthquake). If we just look at 1990 to 2010, then the average was about 15 magnitude 7 or greater earthquakes per year. And if we look at the last three years, then the average is also 15 of this size earthquake per year. So, no, the actual number of very large earthquakes is not increasing over time. It fluctuates year to year, with some years less and some years more.”
And if you would like to know how much energy is released in a magnitude 7 earthquake and a 9 earthquake, Malamud revealed, the equivalent to the energy released in half a megaton nuclear bomb, is the quantum released for a 7 earthquake. And for a 9, the equivalent of 1000 times the energy released in a magnitude 7 earthquake, or one thousand half-megaton nuclear bombs. If we convert this to energy, this would be roughly enough to power every home in the USA for 50 days.
Although scientists have been trying for many years to predict earthquakes (the when and how big), they so far have not succeeded, but are still working at it, says Malamud. “For a complete prediction, we need to tell people when a disaster will occur, where, and how big. As scientists, we have a good idea of where large events might occur based on written and instrumental records of past events. So for instance, we know that Indonesia is near subduction zones, and that there is an extensive history of earthquakes in the past, so we know that Indonesia is likely to experience earthquakes. Based on these past records, we can also forecast the chance that a given size or larger earthquake might occur, in a given year. This is called probabilistic hazard forecasting, and has been very useful in telling us about how big we might expect, on average, each year. But true prediction is much more difficult, where we tell people that ‘next week there will be an earthquake of magnitude of 9′.
Tad Murty, who is adjunct Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Canada said: “If there is a large earthquake far from the ocean, on land, there is no tsunami. The earthquake itself needs to be shallow – some 20 or 30 km below the ocean bottom before it can generate a tsunami, and it needs to be a dip slip, like a subduction. The movement needs to be vertical, not horizontal. In today’s earthquake in Indonesia, the movement was horizontal, because the Indian plate slid past the Burmese plate. In 2004, the Indian Plate went under the Burmese plate, and tens of cubic kilometres of water were suddenly displaced and piled at the ocean surface. This is what causes a tsunami.
Dr Bruce D. Malamud, of Kings College also explained how early warning systems work and said, that there are many different kinds of detectors, and one can never depend on just one set of detectors. First, the earthquake itself has to be detected. This is done by seismographs, and these are done, mostly on land. Earthquake waves propagate through the interior of Earth’s crust, as well as earth’s surface.
We also have ocean-bottom pressure sensors. There are several dozen all around the ocean. They are the first indicators of a tsunami. Then we have tidal gauges, on land but on the coast, put in the water, and they catch the tsunami coming in. By then it’s usually too late.
Indonesia has an early warning system. But all the international agencies work together. They are all part of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and that’s all coordinated by UNESCO.”
In response to the question on whether any changes have been effected in the tsunami warning system since the disaster in 2004, he said, “Following the disaster in 2004, the first early warning systems were placed in the Indian Ocean. With each disaster we learn new things. On the scientific side, we already know the physical principles but we fine-tune our computer models and we make our instruments more precise. The physical process is the same. On the social and economic side, there has been progress, for example, with evacuations.
“When a cyclone hits in the area, almost all the damage and loss of life comes from the storm surge. In developing countries like India and Bangladesh, they use a ‘vertical evacuation system’. Because you can’t evacuate millions of people from the area, the infrastructure and the roads just aren’t there. So they built cyclone shelters on the coast, that are well built and can withstand storm surges and cyclones. In the US, they use a ‘horizontal evacuation system’, because the highways are good and the roads are there so people just move away from the coast.
“In the 2004 tsunami, none of the cyclone shelters in India were damaged. So they thought maybe they could use them for tsunamis as well. Now, if there has to be an evacuation for a tsunami, they use the cyclone shelters.”
The US Geological Survey said the first 8.6-magnitude quake was centred 20 miles beneath the ocean floor around 270 miles from Aceh province. That prompted the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii to issue a tsunami watch for Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Burma, Thailand, the Maldives and other Indian Ocean islands, Malaysia, Pakistan, Somalia, Oman, Iran, Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa and Singapore.
(The writer is a registered PhD scholar and adjunct faculty, St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore)
*with inputs sent by British Geological Survey seismologist Dr Susanne Sargeant
, alkenone unsaturation index. b, Distribution of the records by latitude (grey histogram) and areal fraction of the planet in 5° steps (blue line).
Comments
2012-04-06 08:45 AM
Report this comment #41044
When I read about “… potential physical explanations for the correlations between temperature, CO2 concentration and AMOC variability in three transient simulations of the last deglaciation…” I started wondering about the purpose of all this verbiage. Climate simulations as far as I go have been losers and I certainly can’t check any of this stuff myself. After more unnecessary verbiage about “Uncertainty analysis” and “Robustnes of results” I realized it was meant to ease us into a belief that they have discovered something big: carbon dioxide did not follow but preceded end-Pleistocene warming. I never would have guessed it from their graphs. It is clear that this paper, as all others emanating from the climate establishment, takes it for granted that any observed warming is caused by the enhanced greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide and attempts to prove it. There is just this one problem with this assumption: the chief greenhouse gas on earth is not carbon dioxide but water vapor. They both absorb outgoing infrared (long-wave) radiation and it is their combined absorption of radiant energy that causes the atmosphere to get warm. But now consider this: when we don’t change the amount of carbon dioxide in the air we have a stable climate. There are local temperature and humidity variations, to be sure, but long-term drift is absent. What guarantees this? To prevent a long term temperature drift the IR absorption by greenhouse gas concentration that determines IR transmittance of the atmosphere must respond to any such temperature drift. And water vapor is the only greenhouse gas that can easily do that. Starting from this qualitative picture Ferenc Miskolczi brought in radiation theory and showed that for a stable climate to exist the optical thickness of the atmosphere in the infrared had to have a value of 1.86 (15% transmittance). This transmittance is determined by the combined absorption of infrared radiation by all the greenhouse gases present, but the adjustment is maintained by water vapor, the only adjustable greenhouse gas in the lot. The blogosphere was hostile to the idea because it wiped out the sacrosanct Arrhenius law. But Miskolczi went on to test it using NOAA database of weather balloon observations that goes back to 1948. He found that the IR transmittance of the atmosphere had been constant for the previous 61 years as his theory predicted (E&E 21(4):243-262, 2010). During that same period of time the amount of carbon dioxide in air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of all this carbon dioxide to air had no effect whatsoever upon the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. This is an empirical observation, not derived from any theory, and it overrides any theoretical calculations that do not agree with it. Specifically, it overrides any calculations based on climate models that use the greenhouse effect to predict warming. In accord with this, a close examination of the temperature history of the last 100 years reveals that there has been no greenhouse warming at all during this entire period. Starting with the twentieth century, the first part of the twentieth century warming started in 1910 and stopped in 1940. There was no corresponding increase of carbon dioxide at the beginning of this warming which means that according to the laws of physics it cannot be greenhouse warming. Bjorn Lomborg attributes this warming to solar influence and I agree with him. There was no warming in the fifties, sixties, and seventies while carbon dioxide relentlessly increased. There is no satisfactory explanation for this lack of warming, only various contorted excuses to explain it away. The true reason for this lack of warming is clear from Miskolczi’s work. There was no warming in the eighties and nineties either according to the satellite temperature measurements. There was only a short spurt of warming between 1998 and 2002 caused by the warm water that the super El Nino of 1998 had carried across the ocean. And there was no warming from that point on to the present while carbon dioxide just kept on going up on its merry way. And if you still think Arctic warming proves the existence of greenhouse warming think again: Arctic warming is not greenhouse warming either and is caused by Atlantic Ocean currents carrying warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic (E&E 22(8):1067-1083, 2011). Taking all this history and Miskolczi’s theory into account the attempt of this Nature article to explain the end-Pleistocene warming as greenhouse warming is nothing more than hopelessly misguided global warming doctrine