A Year-Old Mystery Solved: This Event Made the Earth Vibrate for 9 Days
The breakaway of a 1.2km-high mountain in eastern Greenland caused a huge tsunami last year that sent vibrations through the Earth’s crust, a group of researchers, mostly from UCL, have concluded.
Scientists from University College London (UCL) couldn’t ignore a phenomenon that was one of the biggest mysteries of the past year. They finally managed to confirm the connection between the Greenland landslide, the great tsunami and the vibrations of the Earth.
An incredible phenomenon from a year ago explained
Researchers found that the collapse of the 1.2-kilometer-high mountain peak last September triggered the movement of huge masses of water, which, by crashing into the fjords and retreating repeatedly, caused vibrations that reverberated through the Earth’s crust for nine days.
Such extreme phenomena could have occurred because the ice at the foot of the mountain melted due to climate change. Researchers admit that initially the phenomenon observed above Dickson Fjord in eastern Greenland completely baffled them. This was admitted by, among others, co-author of the latest study on the subject, Dr. Stephen Hicks.
“This is the first time that splashing water has been recorded as a vibration of the Earth’s crust, spreading around the world and lasting for several days,” the UCL researcher emphasised. “Even though we know that seismometers record different sources of what happens on the Earth’s surface, there has never been such a long-lasting, globally travelling seismic wave containing only a single vibration frequency,” he explained.
– Our studies of this phenomenon have incredibly highlighted the intricate connections between climate changes in the atmosphere, the destabilization of the ice sheet in the cryosphere, the movements of water bodies in the hydrosphere and the Earth’s solid crust in the lithosphere – he added.
Mathematical model and mega-tsunami
To demonstrate how the water crashed continuously for nine days, scientists recreated the angle of the rockfall using a mathematical model. This showed that if the water had bounced back and forth every 90 seconds, sending vibrations through the Earth’s crust and across the planet, it would have caused one of the largest tsunamis in modern history.
The wave that formed last year stretched for 10 kilometers and was 110 meters high. However, according to a study published in the journal Science, it was reduced to “only” 7 meters within a few minutes.
