Typhoon vibration

2009/07/19 Kortabitarte Egiguren, Irati - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Klima

ANDÉN

The most destructive storms occur in the tropics. In TV news reports we often see images of storms of this type: the wind bursts palm trees and takes the houses out of the “roots”; torrential rains cause flooding and the sea attacks heavily the coast. They are tropical storms. These storms, despite being violent, can take more force and become cyclones. Cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons... there are countless ways to call the same weather phenomenon.

Hurricanes take place in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. Typhoons are those of Southeast Asia. Tropical cyclones taking place in the Indian Ocean. In each place it has a name, but that does not reverse the phenomenon.

Basically these are strong winds over 155 km/h that can feed, increase and strengthen the warm waters of the sea. Cyclones occur at sea. As the warm water warms the air from the surface, the air rises to form a whirlpool. This swirl grows to 250 km in diameter. Enough to get scared!

Small earthquakes

The most destructive storms occur in the tropics.

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US scientists and Taiwan have now seen that typhoons have forces to cause small earthquakes in eastern Taiwan.

To reach this conclusion, scientists have analyzed the small earthquakes that occurred in eastern Taiwan between 2002 and 2007. There were twenty small earthquakes during this period, of which eleven coincided with typhoons. How is that? What happens is that typhoons reduce atmospheric pressure and that this pressure change is enough to break a fault and cause small earthquakes, at least in eastern Taiwan. In fact, earthquakes are often due to the breakdown of geological faults. In violent earthquakes, energy is released instantly and a small earthquake can last several hours, a day or a couple of days.

Earthquakes are often due to broken geological faults.

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In Euskal Herria there are usually very small earthquakes, but they are not dangerous at all. The Earth moves, but above all to prove that it is alive. Maples are very common in many other regions, such as Japan, California... Earthquakes in these regions are mostly low strength. But sometimes the soil is shaken more strongly and causes damage. That's when the news comes to the media. Most of the time there is no news. Thus we have seen on television the strong earthquakes that occurred in Afghanistan, South America or, among many others, in Alaska.

According to researchers, these small earthquakes can be a way to avoid the largest and most violent earthquakes. In fact, these small earthquakes act as a pressure release valve, releasing stress from failures, etc., thus avoiding major earthquakes. It is not yet clear whether a similar phenomenon is occurring in other parts of the world.

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