Earth Observatory Blog

Powerful Twin Quakes Strike Southern California

Submitted on 09 Jul 2019 by:

 

On 5 July 2019 at 1.33am (Singapore time), a Mw 6.4 earthquake struck the town of Ridgecrest in California. Its seismic waves could be felt from Los Angeles to San Jose. Nearly a day and a half later, on 6 July at 11.19am (Singapore time), a more powerful Mw 7.1 quake struck the same region. Because the Mw 7.1 earthquake is the largest event so far in this sequence, it is considered to be the mainshock. The events leading up to it, which include the Mw 6.4 quake, are considered to be foreshocks.

From this sequence of earthquakes, it is clear that the Mw 6.4 foreshock had triggered seismicity on conjugate faults (i.e. intersecting faults that criss-cross in a X-shape) along the Eastern California Shear Zone which runs somewhat parallel to the San Andreas Fault, but is...

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Social Media – The Newest Way to Track Volcanic Ash in Real Time

Submitted on 27 Jun 2019 by:

Social media has found itself a heavyweight role in geology. By scraping Twitter and mining text data in Tweets, scientists at the Nanyang Technological University can now track where volcanic ash has fallen. This breakthrough won Assistant Professor Benoit Taisne and Professor Gao Cong the Accelerating Creativity and Excellence (ACE) Award for their research project titled “Detecting and Tracking Volcanic Ash Using Social Media Data”.

Asst. Prof Taisne, a principal investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), worked closely with...

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How a Powerful Tsunami Shaped the History of Aceh

Submitted on 30 May 2019 by:

I went to Banda Aceh, Indonesia in 2006 to help assess the impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami upon the region’s rich cultural heritage. The scale of destruction caused by the tsunami was staggering. Half the city had been pulverised and all that was left was a mix of concrete, broken furniture, household items, and a colorful patchwork of shreds of clothing. We found clusters of beautifully carved stone grave markers dating back centuries amongst the rubble, half buried in mud and debris, or piled up neglected near areas being cleared by NGOs and donors for new tracts of post-disaster housing.

The same waves that killed over 150,000 people and displaced millions had reached back into the past and threatened to wipe out the historical memories of Aceh’s coastal...

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All About the Official Home of the EOS Dynamic Earth Games

Submitted on 24 Apr 2019 by:

When the time came for us to choose a place to house the EOS Dynamic Earth Games, the answer was a clear and obvious one – the Science Centre Singapore (SCS).

SCS has an impressive 40-year record of making science fun and accessible to the public. They successfully reach out to and engage more than one million visitors annually.

We, at the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), know just how capable the SCS team is. We have worked with them over the years on various projects and launches (e.g. “Earth: Our Untamed Planet” exhibit currently in SCS, and the film screening of EOS documentary The Ratu River). Most recently, we spent the past six months working closely with SCS and acclaimed Californian science museum, The Exploratorium, on a new earth science exhibition...

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The Games We Play - Learning Made Fun with EOS' Dynamic Earth Games

Submitted on 10 Apr 2019 by:

Did my last blog post about the Dynamic Earth Games (DEG) leave you hungry for more details about the games? Well, I hope to satisfy your curiosity in this second post.

The Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) collaborated with BOHO Interactive and the Science Centre Singapore to develop seven different games. These fall into three broad categories:

Volcanoes and Typhoons, Assessing Risk, and Evacuation.

Volcanoes and Typhoons

The Dynamic Earth Games explain the science behind natural hazards with a strong focus on geology and meteorology. While playing the games, you will learn some of the signs of an impending volcanic eruption and the tools that...

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The EOS Dynamic Earth Games – Learning Through Play

Submitted on 03 Apr 2019 by:

What makes up the exciting memories of my first interaction with science? I recall touching the slimy texture of snails, sniffing ammonia salt (also known as “smelly salt”), and making my sister’s hair stand with a balloon.

For me, science is a journey – a fun-filled adventure that satisfies our curiosity of the universe. Think about it. What makes us enjoy playing soccer, chess, or Candy Crush? Games are fun because they involve elements of competition with others, even ourselves, and some require us to cooperate with one or more people. This sense of competition and camaraderie are essentially what makes us enjoy playing games.

The Dynamic Earth Games, an Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) series of board games and card games about natural hazards, use these...

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Professor Kerry Sieh Shares his Insights on Indonesia’s Shattered Paradise, Lombok

Submitted on 18 Feb 2019 by:

On 29 July 2018, Lombok was struck by a 6.4-magnitude earthquake, killing 20 people. A week later, an even stronger earthquake of magnitude 6.9 devasted the island. Strong aftershocks continued to rock the Indonesian island, quickly transforming the popular tourist paradise into “hell on earth”.

In an episode of Channel NewsAsia’s Insight titled "Lombok: A Shattered Paradise", aired on 7 September 2018, Prof Sieh provided insights on how tectonic plate movements could result in tsunamis, volcanic activities, as well as devastating earthquakes. Using the analogy of a cracked windshield on a car, Prof Sieh explained how aftershocks are produced from faults during an earthquake. In some instances, an aftershock can trigger a more powerful earthquake. This is possibly what...

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A Singaporean Survivor's Tale of the Lombok Earthquakes

Submitted on 14 Nov 2018 by:

On Sunday (29 July 2018), I learnt about the strong 6.4-magnitude (M) earthquake in Lombok, Indonesia. As we have friends living there, I wanted to visit to see what aid we could organise for the people there. So my husband and I went to Lombok with some friends, and we linked up with other humanitarian aid groups to visit the Sembalun area, which is about 1,000 metres above sea level, at the foothills of Mount Rinjani, one of the most scenic volcanoes in the world.

 

At about 6.46 pm the following Sunday (5 August 2018), just as we had finished a meeting to prioritise the relief needs, an earthquake suddenly occurred. It was my first time experiencing a quake, and it really shook the foundations of what I knew about them.

I realised I had many...

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Jumping Earthquakes – One Fault at a Time

Submitted on 10 Oct 2018 by:

Published in Nature Geosciences on 1 October 2018, new research by a team of scientists from the Victoria University of Wellington and the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) has revealed how understanding the events leading up to the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake may lead to a different approach to forecasting earthquakes.

The Kaikoura earthquake, which measured Mw 7.8 in magnitude, had struck the South Island of New Zealand in 2016. It resulted in a rupture that stretched over 200 kilometres (km), ripping through 21 faults – a world record for the most number of faults observed to rupture in a single earthquake event.

It is now rightly regarded as the most complex earthquake ever to be studied, and has...

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Sea-Level Rise Could Increase the Risk of Tsunamis

Submitted on 15 Aug 2018 by:

A one-metre rise in sea level could dramatically increase the frequency of flooding up to almost five times for tsunami-safe Macau, in a new study led by scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore). 

The team of scientists from NTU’s Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) and Asian School of the Environment (ASE), used computer modelling, and initially showed that Macau, a densely populated coastal city in China, is relatively safe from tsunamis as it requires an earthquake larger than 8.8-magnitude to cause widespread tsunami floods.

However, with just a sea level rise of 0.5 metres, the tsunami-induced flood risk increases to up to 2.4 times and with a 1 metre rise, up to 4.7 times. 

The increased flooding frequency was...

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