Posted on 09/05/2007 7:59:13 PM PDT by blam
Warning of tsunami greater than 2004
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 05/09/2007
Tens of millions of people who live in the Bay of Bengal face the threat of a tsunami as massive as the one that devastated the Sumatran coast in 2004, a leading geologist warns today.
Satellite images showing Banda Aceh before (top) and after (bottom) the 2004 tsunami
While the Boxing Day 2004 disaster took the scientific community by surprise, killing around a quarter of a million people, one geologist who had sounded the alert about the dangers in the Indian Ocean now says many of the same warning signs exist where tens of millions of people live along the coasts of Myanmar, Bangladesh and West Bengal.
Dr Phil Cummins from Geoscience Australia argues in today's issue of the journal Nature that one reason the signs have not been picked up is because seismic shifts in the region is being masked by the Bengal Fan, a 12 mile thick undersea layer of sediment shed from the Himalayas and Tibet over millions of years.
Earthquakes occur when stress built up as the tectonic plates slide past each other is released. Geologists had assumed the boundary between the Indo-Australian and Asian plates north of the Andaman Islands was one in which the plates were moving past each other horizontally, and not pushing against one another.
But satellite measurements now suggest the plates are pushing together. If there is a sudden release of stress, the resulting upward thrust of the sea floor in the Bay of Bengal could cause a what Dr Cummins called a "giant tsunami" that would reach the Ganges Delta in a couple of hours, where 60 million people live within 10 metres of sea level.
He added that the earthquake itself could be as big as magnitude 9.0 and cause devastation in the northern tip of the Bay of Bengal. "It is difficult to dispute the evidence," he said, adding that the earthquake that triggered the 2004 tsunami had, "if anything probably increased the risk" of a quake in the newly identified risk region.
To back his fears, the new analysis shows evidence for vertical movement accompanying earthquakes in the historical evidence. One violent earthquake in the area in 1762 caused uplift and subsidence along a large part of the coast, and may have triggered a tsunami.
That same area is now home to major centres like Dhaka and Kolkata. The Nature report suggests that although a major tsunami may still be as much as 200 years away, it is impossible to be sure and the risk, which is currently hard to quantify, should be taken seriously.
Images showing the tectonic setting of the Bay of Bengal (top) and the effect of the 1797 earthquake (bottom)
Prof Richard Arculus of the Australian National University, Canberra, said the warnings should be taken very seriously. "A few months before the devastating earthquake and accompanying tsunami triggered off northern Sumatra in late 2004, Phil Cummins published a perceptive analysis of historic events of this nature in the region.
"He warned that countries bordering the Indian Ocean, including the northern coast of Australia, were at significant risk, and the lack of a tsunami warning system analogous to that deployed in the Pacific was a serious issue."
Dr Tom Blenkinsop at James Cook University, Queensland, said that the work is novel and important because "unlike the Indian-Asian plate boundary further south, this is an area that was not considered to be at much risk from earthquakes-driven tsunamis."
Dr Edward Bryant at the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, said: "Dr Cummins' estimate of a million deaths due to a tsunami from an earthquake in the northeast Bay of Bengal is not scaremongering.
"It is a realistic hypothesis that unfortunately would dwarf the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 because there still is no effective tsunami warning system in this region. Even if there were, the short lead time before the arrival of the tsunami would prohibit any widespread evacuation."
Kevin McCue, director of the Australian Seismological Centre, said: "The message is alarming, perhaps justifiably, given the unexpected disaster that followed the great Sumatran earthquake and tsunami of 2004, a disaster of local, regional and global reach.
"Disaster planners might need more information than is given in the paper, particularly some quantitative measure of uncertainties in the science."
There are disasters lurking all around the globe, including the American West Coast, Yellowstone, and hurricane season in the Gulf.
I can’t get too worked up about disasters that may or may not happen halfway around the world.
Have The Last Days arrived yet?
I bet some beach front real estate would be really cheap right about now!........
It appears they've been with us for quite a while.
Psychic Sylvia Browne once said she was worried about a tsunami coming ashore in the New York metropolitan area.
Nothing so far......it would certainly make Al-Queda happy IF it did happen.
Yes we were. And we did.
So shut up and stay dead.
Note the NOAA graphic below. If there’s an earthquake north of Puerto Rico, in the Puerto Rico Trench, which is the deepest depression in the Atlantic Ocean at almost 29,000+ feet below sea level, the massive undersea mountain range (purple color) will slide down and cause a massive tsunami in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean islands. On the southern part of Puerto Rico is the Muertos Trough, which is part of the Caribbean Sea tectonic plate, and this plate would also shift, as the North American Plate rubs with the Caribbean Plate.
Puerto Rico will suffer catastrophic loss of human lives and land area. Unbelievable...
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03trench/trench/media/trench.html
Sylvia Browne is a loon.
Dang.
I know.
Do radio and/or TV newspersons in Puerto Rico tell people that this might occur? It would be beneficial to have someone from Civil Defense and NOAA address these matters with the public before something horrible happens.
Thanks, I didn’t know that about PR. That’s a deep trench.
My pleasure.
It’s the deepest trench after the Marianas Trench in the Pacific (which is the deepest trench on the planet)... scary stuff... my grandmother and father live near Old San Juan, about 100 feet from the beach... if a tsunami hits the northern coast of PR, they’re gone...
Oh boy!! Move your relatives?
I thought of the Marianas Trench too.
There's a cute PR waitress that works at my local Chinese restaurant...ever so pleasant and quick with a smile.
I can’t move them... my grandma is 96 y/o and my father is born & bred there too and would never move... we just have to hope for the best...
A Puerto Rican gal working at a Chinese restaurant? That’s comical...
 |
||
| · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · | ||
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.