Stormquakes

NatGeo

BELOW THE RUMBLE of passing cars, chirping birds, and rustling leaves, the Earth is constantly humming. This geologic symphony is driven by the ever-sloshing oceans that blanket nearly three-quarters of our planet, but tracing individual refrains from this watery orchestra has long posed a challenge.

Now, researchers have done just that, picking out a previously unknown seismic phenomenon that they have dubbed stormquakes. These events, described this week in Geophysical Research Letters, are pulses of seismic waves birthed from the ferocious energy in massive storms, and they can radiate thousands of miles across continents. (Learn about a different kind of strange seismic wave that rippled around the world.)

“I was surprised by what they saw,” says Göran Ekström, a seismologist at Columbia University who specializes in unusual earthquakes. Big storms are thought to produce a lengthy jumble of rumbles that radiate from coastlines. But in the new study, the team identified a discrete “burst of wiggles” from each stormquake that they can trace back to its origin off shore.

Essentially, large storms create long-period waves which interact with the shallow seabed at continental shelves. It can put stress energy over an area equivalent to a 3.5 mag earthquake or greater, and that propagates through the crust. They found they can trace some of that propagation back to the source(s) and it correlates to storm paths. If/when they can trace those wavefields through the earth and separate it from the "noise", they can make better guesses at the local composition of the earth, it's structure, and it's seismic properties in areas that typically don't have earthquakes.

They are dubbing these "stormquakes".

a reply to: RadioRobert

Interesting...

I think we call this thunder?

~Namaste

originally posted by: SonOfTheLawOfOne
a reply to: RadioRobert

Interesting...

I think we call this thunder?

~Namaste

No, I think they are talking about vibrations in the Earth's crust.

a reply to: SonOfTheLawOfOne

Well, this is essentially storm swells in the ocean pressing against the sea floor at the shelves.

If the atmosphere was static, it would be similar to tracing thunder vibrations through the air and using that data to make educated guesses concerning the atmosphere's makeup at different points in the sky: air pressure/density, humidity, composition of gasses, maybe temperature, etc

originally posted by: butcherguy

originally posted by: SonOfTheLawOfOne
a reply to: RadioRobert

Interesting...

I think we call this thunder?

~Namaste

No, I think they are talking about vibrations in the Earth's crust.

My frivolous attempt at sarcasm.

~Namaste

Wasn't the recent Typhoon Hagibis in Japan just accompanied by an earthquake?