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It’s not just California that could be hit- NZ potentially too
‘Megathrust’ earthquake & devastating tsunami could hit New Zealand, scientists warn
New Zealand could be potentially hit by a massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake followed by a “towering” tsunami, scientists warn. According to the researchers, a 2016 quake that hit the area reawakened a hazardous fault that was believed to be dormant.
The Hikurangi subduction zone – a deep trench in the Earth’s crust running along the eastern shore of New Zealand’s North Island – is now active and could trigger magnitude 8.5 earthquakes, which would be far more devastating that the one that hit the islands in 2016, a group of scientists from the GNS research institute warn. The earthquakes are also likely to be followed by tsunamis that could reach New Zealand’s coast within mere minutes, the geologists add.“We need to think Japan 2011, basically, because if our whole plate boundary ruptured, it would be a magnitude 9 earthquake,” Ursula Cochran, an earthquake geologist at the GNS, told the local media. “The Hikurangi subduction zone is potentially the largest source of earthquake and tsunami hazard in New Zealand, but there is still much to learn about it,” GNS Science said in a statement earlier.
https://www.rt.com/news/411364-new-zealand-earthquake-tsunami/
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Seismologists and geoscientists are warning that New Zealand should prepare for a “the big one”, a massive earthquake that could reach magnitude 9.0 or higher. New Zealand was already hit by a massive earthquake around this time last year, the Kaikoura earthquake, but that quake registered only 7.8M. Despite the sheer power of the quake luckily only a few people were killed or injured. Yet researchers have asked the New Zealand public to remain vigilant and prepare for a quake that could be much more powerful.
A 9.0 Magnitude Earthquake
Earthquakes are rated on a logarithmic scale. This means that although the Kaikoura earthquake which occurred last year was a 7.8, and another earthquake in New Zealand (the Christchurch earthquake of 2011) was a 6.3, the Kaikoura earthquake actually released approximately 180 times as much energy as the 2011 quake. The 9.0 earthquake that scientists are warning about could be 11,000 times as powerful as the Christchurch quake.
It should be noted that these magnitudes are not on the Richter scale, a system of calculating earthquake intensity that was used for much of the 20th century. The Richter scale was actually abandoned by seismologists because it worked primarily on earthquakes which occurred in California, and was of little use when trying to measure intense quakes like the magnitude 9 quake that hit Japan in 2011. Seismologists now use a new system called the “momentum magnitude scale”, which can detect quakes on the other side of the Earth.
New Zealand is not the only area of the world that should be concerned about the possibility of intense earthquakes. The warning about New Zeland’s earthquake troubles comes only a couple weeks after a report was published in Nature Geoscience that implied the Cascadia Subduction Zone, located along the coast of Washington and Oregon, could rupture again and sooner than most scientists expected. Furthermore, the fault line is also more likely to generate a more massive quake than many researchers expected.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone is almost 1000 km or 620 miles long and it is currently being jammed under the North American plate. This makes the subduction zone a thrust fault like the New Zealand plate, capable of producing similar damage. The energy this fault generates cannot release itself due to a massive sediment band which sits over the oceanic Juan de Fuca plate. The sediment is acting as a wedge between the two plates and preventing the subduction zone from releasing stress.
Read More at https://sciencetrends.com/experts-warn-new-zealand-primed-devastating-9-0-magnitude-earthquake/
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