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Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

bbc.co.uk

21–30 of 33 posts

Re: Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

#21

The hypocenter (location underground where the earthquake started) is fairly deep (~26 km according to the USGS) so hopefully the rupture didn't reach the surface (it's ambiguous but maybe 30% likely for an earthquake of this size with a hypocenter at that depth). If it didn't, then the likelihood of a damaging tsunami is far less because there isn't a big displacement at the seafloor. Interestingly, from the locatio…

I am interested in this stuff. A blog post with Monte Carlo simulations sounds cool!

(EDIT: I don't normally do this, but... At least 6 other people agree. Sounds like you'll have an audience!)

Re: Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

#23
post #14

Looking at the latitude, can Tsunami go as far as Australia/NZ?

Sure. It takes about 12-15hrs for a Chilean tsunami to reach NZ. There have been a few significant ones in the past eg in 1868, 1877, and 1960.

Most of the time though they don't usually have much effect after travelling that far. Might get some harbour surges and currents etc.

Re: Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

#24
post #14

Looking at the latitude, can Tsunami go as far as Australia/NZ?

It would almost certainly die in severity before it reaches there. The 2005 Boxing Day earthquake/tsunami happened in Indonesia, and it did reach some parts of Africa but it wasn't a major deal. This tsunami looks weaker in comparison.

Re: Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

#25

The hypocenter (location underground where the earthquake started) is fairly deep (~26 km according to the USGS) so hopefully the rupture didn't reach the surface (it's ambiguous but maybe 30% likely for an earthquake of this size with a hypocenter at that depth). If it didn't, then the likelihood of a damaging tsunami is far less because there isn't a big displacement at the seafloor. Interestingly, from the locatio…

I am interested in this stuff. A blog post with Monte Carlo simulations sounds cool! (EDIT: I don't normally do this, but... At least 6 other people agree. Sounds like you'll have an audience!)

Sorry, I unintentionally downvoted this when I intended to upvote it. I'd like to see this as well: a demonstration of how the available data gets analyzed to produce both models and predictions.

Re: Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

#27
post #4

I live on a 11th floor apartment in Sao Paulo, Brazil (near Av. Paulista), and I felt this quake very slightly! It was very subtle and I thought first that I was just feeling dizzy or something. Then I searched for "terremoto" (earthquake in spanish) on Twitter and then I found a bunch of posts. Isn't it crazy that I could feel this from over here?

Earthquakes, and the twitter responses to them, have been the focus of some pretty interesting academic studies that I've read (2011 Christchurch, NZ was what I studied). If I still had access to the academic journals, I'd pull up some articles. They present fantastic case studies of how using twitter user lat/longs, time logs, and nlp can be very useful.

Re: Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

#28
post #4

I live on a 11th floor apartment in Sao Paulo, Brazil (near Av. Paulista), and I felt this quake very slightly! It was very subtle and I thought first that I was just feeling dizzy or something. Then I searched for "terremoto" (earthquake in spanish) on Twitter and then I found a bunch of posts. Isn't it crazy that I could feel this from over here?

Earthquakes, and the twitter responses to them, have been the focus of some pretty interesting academic studies that I've read (2011 Christchurch, NZ was what I studied). If I still had access to the academic journals, I'd pull up some articles. They present fantastic case studies of how using twitter user lat/longs, time logs, and nlp can be very useful.

When I lived in California I would often do a twitter search after feeling a small earthquake. If there weren't any results, I would usually assume it was a truck passing by or something like that.

Very often there would be tweets about the earthquake several minutes before the official USGS page for the earthquake was created.

Re: Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

#29

Not a bad idea to setup an email alert at the USGS Earthquake Notification Service for your area if you're in a coastal location: https://sslearthquake.usgs.gov/ens/ (or if you're not and want to get news of this kind of thing sooner) Has anyone created an app that checks against your phone's GPS location automatically?

I also highly recommend the Global Disaster and Alert Communication System set up by the UN and European Commission. Their ranking of orange vs red level events tends to map pretty well to how serious the event is in terms of destruction.

http://www.gdacs.org/

Re: Tsunami alert as Chile hit by powerful earthquake

#30
post #13

Currently in Santiago, building shook for well over a minute. No damage here though

I'm in Concepcion, farther south and I felt (mild to moderate) shaking for ~6 minutes, with varying intensity. Also no damage here, and people essentially continue on with life as usual, aside from the towns near the coast, which were evacuated because of tsunami danger.
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