The magnitude-9 earthquake and associated tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011 illustrates the devastating power of earthquakes from subduction zones – boundaries where two tectonic plates converge, as one plate dives beneath the other. These are earthquake-prone regions that pose a threat to millions of people worldwide, especially in Southeast Asia. To help forecast such hazards, two new studies from the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) investigated how these subduction zones work. The studies, published in Nature Geoscience, show that existing hazard assessments from subduction zones worldwide need to be updated.

Earthquake and tsunami assessments mostly rely on our knowledge of past events and of physical processes describing how one plate dives under the other...