Phys.org January 25, 2023 On 15 January 2022, the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai (HTHH) eruption injected 146 MtH2O and 0.42 MtSO2 into the stratosphere. This large water vapour perturbation means that HTHH will probably increase. An international team of researchers (UK, Austria) estimated the radiative response to the HTHH eruption and derived the increased risk that the global mean surface temperature anomaly shortly exceeds 1.5 °C following the eruption. They showed that HTHH has a tangible impact of the chance of imminent 1.5 °C exceedance (increasing the chance of at least one of the next 5 years exceeding 1.5 °C by 7%), but the level of climate […]
Tag Archives: Earthquakes
Machine learning refines earthquake detection capabilities
Science Daily November 1, 2021 New satellites are opening a new window into tectonic processes by allowing researchers to observe length and time scales that were not possible in the past. However, existing algorithms are not suited for the vast amount of InSAR data flowing in from these new satellites. To process all this data an international team of researchers (USA – Los Alamos National Laboratory, France) developed the first tool based on machine learning algorithms to extract ground deformation from InSAR data, which enables the detection of ground deformation automatically — without human intervention — at a global scale, […]
Stratospheric balloons listen in on ground activity
Phys.org November 16, 2021 Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even severe weather events produce a medley of low-frequency infrasound waves below the range of human hearing. Infrasound waveforms generated by natural and anthropogenic phenomena contain important clues about the size and nature of the event. A team of researchers in the US (Sandia National Laboratory, Caltech) has shown that sensors on balloons in the lower stratosphere can record faithful representations of the near-source acoustic wave field at unprecedented range. The acoustic signature of a buried chemical explosion recorded at a range of 56 km and an altitude of 21.8 km was […]
Simulating 800,000 years of California earthquake history to pinpoint risks
EurekAlert January 25, 2021 A team of researchers in the US (University of Southern California, Columbia University, UC Riverside, USGS) developed a prototype Rate-State earthquake simulator (RSQSim) that simulates hundreds of thousands of years of seismic history in California. When this is coupled with CyberShake, the framework can calculate the amount of shaking that would occur for each quake. It can simulate up to 100,000s of years on a complicated fault system. RSQSim transforms mathematical representations of the geophysical forces at play in earthquakes into algorithms, and then solves them on some of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet. […]
AI detects hidden earthquakes
Science Daily October 22, 2020 Earthquake signal detection and seismic phase picking are challenging tasks in the processing of noisy data and the monitoring of microearthquakes. A team of researchers (Stanford University, Georgia Institute of Technology) has developed a global deep-learning model for simultaneous earthquake detection and phase picking. Performing these two related tasks in tandem improves model performance in each individual task by combining information in phases and in the full waveform of earthquake signals by using a hierarchical attention mechanism. They applied their model to 5 weeks of continuous data recorded during 2000 Tottori earthquakes in Japan and […]
How water in the deep Earth triggers earthquakes and tsunamis
Science Daily June 24, 2020 Oceanic lithosphere carries volatiles, notably water, into the mantle through subduction at convergent plate boundaries. This subducted water exercises control on the production of magma, earthquakes, formation of continental crust and mineral resources. An international team of researchers (UK, Germany) studied boron trace element and isotopic fingerprints of melt inclusions. These reveal that hydrated mantle rather than crust is a dominant supplier of subducted water to the central arc. The current dehydration of these fracture zones coincides with the current locations of the highest rates of earthquakes. The combined geochemical and geophysical data indicate that […]
New technique separates industrial noise from natural seismic signals
EurekAlert May 19, 2020 In the past, human-caused seismic signals, as a result of industrial activities, were viewed as ‘noise’ that polluted a dataset, resulting in otherwise useful data being dismissed. A team of researchers in the US (Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of Washington) used a year’s worth of data from more than 1,700 seismic stations in the contiguous United States and detected approximately 1.5 million industrial noise sequences, which corresponds on average to around 2.4 detections per day at each station. With cloud computing that allows for greater scalability and flexibility, they were able to analyze large-scale seismic […]
New technology developed to improve forecasting of Earthquakes, Tsunamis
Science Daily November 22, 2019 Techniques currently available for seafloor monitoring work best in the deeper ocean where there is less noise interference. An international team of researchers (USA – University of South Florida, Italy) has developed and tested a new high-tech shallow water buoy that can detect the small movements and changes in the Earth’s seafloor that are often a precursor to deadly natural hazards. The seafloor geodesy system is an anchored spar buoy topped by high precision GPS. The buoy’ orientation is measured using a digital compass that provides heading, pitch, and roll information — helping to capture […]