Storm-earthquake: A new disaster awaits humans

Scientists have just discovered a new geophysical phenomenon: the combination of two terrifying disasters, storms and earthquakes.

Research by US scientists published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters shows that a strong storm could cause seismic phenomena in the nearby ocean, as strong as a 3.5-magnitude earthquake. Richter and can last for days, even thousands of kilometers across continents. Storm-earthquake phenomena were discovered accidentally by the team when trying to track low-frequency earthquakes.

Seismograph Pham Van Vien of Florida State University, lead author of the study, commented that an earthquake was an odd thing.Storms can trigger massive seismic waves at sea due to their intense energy, which in turn causes another type of wave. These secondary waves then interact with the seafloor - but only in certain places - and that causes a vibration, Pham explained. It occurs only in areas with large continental shelves and shallow, flat land. However, not all typhoons cause storm-earthquakes, but when they do, storm-earthquakes seem to concentrate in certain hot spots.

Images from NOAA Satellite show that Irene has winds of up to 185km / h.(Photo: AP).

Research shows that earthquakes are quite common but were previously overlooked because they were considered "seismic noises". Seismologists often overlook the vibrations that create waves when monitoring earthquakes, so that's why they haven't been noticed until now. Seismic researcher Paul Earle of the US Geological Survey (USGS) also said that seismic waves generated by the ocean appeared on US Geological Survey equipment but in the task of detecting earthquakes, the This wave is considered "seismic noise".

The statistics team had 14,077 earthquakes from September 2006 to February 2015 in the Gulf of Mexico and off Florida - USA, the New England region of the USA, Nova Scotia province of Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador (polar province). east of Canada) and British Columbia (the westernmost province of Canada). To detect storm-earthquakes requires a special type of military sensor. According to the study, Hurricane Ike in 2008 and Typhoon Irene in 2011 caused many hurricanes-earthquakes.

Pham and his colleagues hope that storm-earthquakes can help future researchers better understand ocean dynamics or even earth structures.