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Quaking in our boots

That was a big earthquake yesterday, apparently 8.8 on the old reichter scale.

The fallout is that even little old New Zealand issued tsunami warnings for coastal regions, for fear that the waves produced by that jolt all the way up near Eastern Russia might produce problems here, thousands of Km away.

I generally keep a weather-eye out for earthquake reports and I've noticed that in the past few weeks there has been quite a significant increase in reported activity across the face of the globe. Is there an underlying reason for this or is it simply a statistically unimportant clustering created by mere happenstance?

I asked Google Gemini if it was just my imagination or whether there have been more than the average number of quakes and it authoritatively responded "Yes, there has been a notable increase in significant earthquake activity in the past few weeks" so I guess it must be true.

I wasn't surprised therefore, when the 8.8 struck yesterday and I would not be surprised if we see a few more significant quakes before this clustering is complete.

I've seen some interesting suggestions as to the causes -- ranging from the fact that the earth's magnetic poles are about to flip, through to the effect of the solar cycle reaching a critial point and even the possibility that the alien spaceship that is presently speeding towards earth from interstellar space might have created some kind of gravitational wave as it dropped out of warp.

Ah, you have to love the diversity of thought that one encounters on the internet -- even when the vast majority of it is just clueless conspiracy.

As I type this, at 3am on Thursday morning, I see that some countries have already been hit by the post-quake tsunamis. The coastline of Eastern Russia has taken a hammering with buildings being knocked off their foundations and huge tracts of low-lying land being flooded by the surge.

Japan has experienced waves of up to 1.2 metres, which is very significant.

The reason that a 1.2m tsunami is so much more destructive than a regular 1.2m ocean wave is that unlike a regular wave, which is simply a small peak in the water, a tsunami is a solid wall of water. The volume of water in a regular ocean wave is small but the volume of water in a tsunami can be immense. It is the sheer volume of this water, and the energy that represents, which causes the problem. Think of it as a sudden increase in sea-level that drives water inland over low-lying land.

Although regular tides may change the effective level of the sea by several metres, this happens over many hours so the flow associated with that change is small. A tsunami, by comparison, arrives suddenly so the flow and currents produced can be substantial and this is what contributes to the massive damage they can cause.

I guess scientists will use this incident as a great opportunity to learn more about how to predict, track and mitigate the effects of such waves and the quakes that cause them however, once the alien ship arrives it may all be academic because they will either bring us a storehouse of knowledge that will leapfrog our technology -- or they'll destroy us.

Hahaha... now you understand why I always close each column with...

Carpe Diem folks!

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