Tsunami-generating quake possible off Indonesia, say scientists
Posted: 17 January 2010 1459 hrs
A quake reading on a seismograph. |
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PARIS: A huge wave-generating quake capable of killing as many people as in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami could strike off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, and the city of Padang is in the firing line, a team of seismologists said on Sunday.
The group - led by a prominent scientist who predicted a 2005 Sumatran quake with uncanny accuracy - issued the warning in a letter to the journal Nature Geoscience.
The peril comes from a relentless buildup of pressure over the last two centuries on a section of the Sunda Trench, one of the world's most notorious earthquake zones, which runs parallel to the western Sumatra coast, they said.
This section, named after the Mentawai islands, "is near failure," the letter warned bluntly.
"The threat of a great tsunamigenic earthquake with a magnitude of more than 8.5 on the Mentawai patch is unabated. (...) There is potential for loss of life on the scale of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami."
The letter gave no timeframe for this event but warned starkly of the danger for Padang, a city of 850,000 people that lies broadside to the risky segment.
"The threat from such an event is clear and the need for urgent mitigating action remains extremely high," it said.
More than 220,000 people lost their lives in the killer wave of December 26 2004 when a 9.3-magnitude earthquake, occurring farther north on the Sunda Trench, ruptured the boundary where the Australian plate of Earth's crust plunges beneath the Eurasian plate.
The authors of the letter are led by John McCloskey, a professor of the Environmental Sciences Research Institute at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland.
In March 2005, McCloskey warned that the December 26 2004 quake had built up major stress in an adjoining part of the fault to the south. He declared a temblor in the region of 8.5 magnitude with the capacity to generate a tsunami was imminent and urged the authorities to beef up preparations.
Such predictions are extraordinarily rare in the world of seismology. Knowledge of where earthquakes strike is extensive but the ability to say when they will occur remains elusive.
But McCloskey was proven right within two weeks. On March 28 2005, a quake measuring 8.6 erupted at Simeulue island, generating a three-metre (10-feet) tsunami.
In the letter to Nature Geoscience, his team explained their calculations for the vulnerable Mentawai segment in the aftermath of a 7.6-magnitude quake that occurred 60 kilometers (37 miles) near Padang on September 30 last year, killing more than 1,000 people.
Despite its size, this event did not ease the pressure on the Mentawai section, especially under the island of Siberut. Stresses there have been accumulating since an 8.7-magnitude quake in 1797 that caused fault slippage of 10 metres (32.5 feet) and unleashed a tsunami that inundated Padang and neighbouring areas.
Under Siberut, the largest of the Mentawai islands, "the megathrust strain-energy budget remains substantially unchanged" after the 2009 quake, McCloskey's team said.
"It is imperative that the Indonesian authorites, with the assistance of the international community and non-governmental organisations, ensure that they complete the relief effort and earthquake-resistant reconstruction following this earthquake, and work with the people in Padang to help prepare them for the next one."
if we pray, will it not happen?
Better not. This Water Monster appetite is big. Anyway to prevent a not.
Dont worry
My Mega Ark be ready by then
but only can fit one million ppl
Originally posted by noahnoah:
Dont worry
My Mega Ark be ready by then
but only can fit one million ppl
Don't worry I'm sure there will be plenty of Mega Arks or similar ships around then XD
call the arktanic?
Originally posted by RoyFang:Don't worry I'm sure there will be plenty of Mega Arks or similar ships around then XD
aiyo but mine is original de lar...
similar as me de ,all piracy de
can sink anytime
sad... cannot go beach le
oh no..2012.
Originally posted by FireIce:call the arktanic?
cham ah... titanic buang iceberg...
Arktanic buang simi???
Bukit timah? ![]()
according to the movie 2012, we all need to move to africa
Originally posted by PedoBear:according to the movie 2012, we all need to move to africa
aww.... but i just build this metal space ship alrdy....
let's live in the skies ba
Originally posted by Mr Milo:
let's live in the skies ba
quick save the world by pouring all the world's milo into the ocean~~~
![]()
A bad yr for 2010?
Disaster after disaster.
More and more pple gonna get killed.
Too many bad karma committed....not must return back.
Ok ok, natural disaster lah...we pple can predict to prevent.
But certain are unable to especially that is hit in the wee hour.
did we have so much disaster last time ?
yes.
/me pours quick freeze milo into the ocean
/me waits for the freeze to act...
I thought i will share another possibilities for you to digest.....add an Understanding to the topics of this thread....
A possible Earth Quake or Volcano erruption in the Sunda Trench will create Earthquake but there is another hidden danger....that is the releases of large Methane Gas deposit.
Example ....Here is an actual event....
Lake Nyos in Cameroon released a similar cloud of gas in 1986. Because carbon dioxide is heavier than air, 1.7 million tons of the gas bubbled out of the water and rolled onto the shore. Within a few minutes, some 1,746 people and more than 2,000 suffocated.
It is found that in SEA has large deposit of Methane hydrates a frozen form of Methane gas.
here is the report....
Numerous marine areas in SouthEast Asia are cold and deep enough to develop stable gas hydrates of greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide and of reducing agents such as hydrogen sulfide. In addition many of these deeps have low oxygen values below sill depths.
Here is report about Indonesia......
Bathymetry and acoustic seafloor imagery of the Storegga Slide have identified seafloor depressions or “pockmarks” up to 1500 feet in diameter and less than 15 feet in depth, which are associated with the presence of gas. (6) The pockmarks are consistent with the remnants of old methane gas explosion sites that triggered the landslides at Storegga.
Extensive seafloor mapping following the December 2004 Indonesia earthquake/tsunami was conducted to identify submarine landslides and pockmarks similar to those at the Storegga Slide complex. (See “Dramatic Direct Visuals of the December 2004 Bay of Bengal Epicenter Earthquake Rupture Zone” at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_187.html; accessed November 26, 2005.)
The British Royal Navy oceanographic survey ship “HMS Scott” was tasked in January 2005 (with the agreement of the Indonesian Government) to immediately survey the seabed at the epicenter of the December 26, 2004 earthquake near Aceh, Sumatra. The purpose of the survey was to gather scientific data before sediment and erosion mask the changes to the seabed’s structure
interpret the “slumping” depicted in the visuals above? He would be ecstatic, I believe. He would say something like: “Here is evidence of pressurized hydrocarbons exploding through the overlying rock, first ballooning it up and then causing it to collapse into slumps once the gases were released into the water.” Furthermore, he would probably say that the huge amount of (methane?) outgassing would be sufficient to induce the tsunami that followed the Sumatran earthquake of December 26, 2005