A science blog with Eric Berger

Chile earthquake strongest since 2004 Sumatra tsunami


The strongest earthquake since the 2004 Sumatran earthquake that generated a devastating tsunami struck early this morning, at about 12:34 a.m. CT, off the coast of Chile. The quake had a magnitude of 8.8.

Although much of the Pacific rim is bracing bracing for a tsunami, it is expected to be tens of centimeters high (for Japan) to 2 to 3 meters high for Hawai’i.

Chile has a history of large earthquakes as the country is situated near the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates, and the plates are converging at a relatively rapid rate of 80 mm per year. Since 1973, there have been 13 events of magnitude 7.0 or greater in the region.

The U.S. Geological Survey has records of only six earthquakes of stronger magnitude during the last few centuries. Here’s a map showing where the most vigorous shaking took place this morning.


The largest earthquake in recorded history occurred in May 1960 about 230 miles south of the present quake. This magnitude 9.5 earthquake killed 1,655 people in southern Chile and unleashed a tsunami that crossed the Pacific, killing 61 people in Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines.

So it is hoped that the present quake will have significantly less impact than that.

Categories: Natural Disasters
Eric Berger

79 Responses

  1. ttyler5 says:


    Check this out:

    GRACE gravity model of earth’s surface:

    GRACE databases including water layer:

  2. xxx says:

    ttyler5 the time arrival was interesting and pretty close. Though I will yield to the enhanced sophistication requirement, but it surprises me that there is not a formula/model capable of predicting wave height very precisely at every point on the globe witin minutes. While the wave variables change over time, once plugged in, I would have expected they should be predictable in this generation.

    This is not weather “science” with unpredictable, and I believe unknown, variables that distort prediction over time.

  3. ttyler5 says:


    ” … surprises me that there is not a formula/model capable of predicting wave height very precisely at every point on the globe within minutes.”

    xxx, I don’t know that there isn’t one under development.

    But, I would guess that deploying it would be a lotta unnecessary work and expense.

  4. xxx says:

    ttyler5 Tell that to the victims of the expense, albeit infrequent, but significant when it does occur, “But, I would guess that deploying it would be a lotta unnecessary work and expense.”

    I think this could have application to storm surge, thus I suspect that might be reflected in those models. If the variable proximity of moon and sun in relation to the “event” is not considered in calculating storm surge, there we go, I think the gravity could act like an accellerator or perpetuator.

    I keep wnating to think roughly of the sin/cos graph. The event raises the curve above the X-axis


    and the shock raises the water and pull of moon/sun gravity keeps the tsunami at that level diminished by the earth’s gravity and while there the rotation of sun and moon under those influences accelerate the risen mass with the pull and diminishes it going away from the pull. Likewise for surge.

  5. ttyler5 says:


    ” Tell that to the victims ”

    xxx, you’re not following what I’m saying — (and I would not take a position of the type you are accusing me of taking, anyway.)

    ” … a formula/model capable of predicting wave height very precisely at every point on the globe within minutes ….”

    The level of resolution you are describing is completely unnecessary.

    Check out NOAA’s model again:

    Using remote instrument reports, NOAA had an accurate tsunami forecast for Hawaii and the Pacific ready following the Chilean quake

    — based on present technology.

    You don’t need to ” … predict wave height very precisely at every point on the globe within minutes ….”

    — in order to accurately predict the general strike zone and general wave height.

    That level of detail would take a massive investment in resources aimed at producing such a super high res model and the inputs for producing it “on demand”

    — including a dedicated supercomputer receiving all the live data inputs from all the related sensor devices in the world and in orbit 24/7/365

    — and of course it would deflect massive resources away from constructing the *detection and warning* system that actually gets people out of the way.

    The 2004 Indian Ocean debacle is the perfect example.

    We modeled the thing just fine.

    Hundreds of thousands of people died because there was no detection and early warning system.

    That’s where we need to use resources, we don’t have a global network for this.

  6. SAN says:

    ttyler5 – Absolutely agree. More buoys.

    We know that large earthquakes are required to create large tsunamis, but the converse does not hold. Large earthquakes under the ocean may not make large tsunamis. The quake needs to be shallow to cause a massive displacement of water, but even then, a large, shallow quake could have a significant horizontal rather than vertical slip, so the displacement may not be strong.

    Bottom line is it’s much better to detect and track them with buoys than play games with forecasts. Unlike a tornado, most of the impacted sites will have hours rather than minutes to get ready.

  7. SAN says:

    Steve C. – You lost me guy. Why did the moon move towards us?

  8. Steve C. says:

    SAN, I was just riffing on the fact that typically the moon is drifting away from the earth about an inch per year. This happens because of tidal friction slowing down the rotation rate of the earth, and the angular momentum of the earth-moon system is conserved by the moon moving a little bit further out.

    Anyway, I was making a (hopefully) humorous post about conservation of angular momentum. Physicists are invited to correct me. :-)

  9. xxx says:

    Sorry, gotta go soon, here is my first uneditted thourhgts

    ttyler5 our blogs were posted simultaneously at March 3, 2010 03:03 PM and through my cynicism I certainly meant no personal accusation. I reread your blog “unnecessary” work struck me immediately, because I thought there was an “unnecessary” evacuation and I have seen these.

    Being we have NASA, and the forces that work for and against a launch, would be the same forces that would work for or against surges and tsunami, I presumed this type of prediction would be very precise and convenient.

    When mentioning costs I, look more to hidden emotional and real cost associated with forecasts. I have been through the emotional costs of mergers, acquisitions, consolidations and even a bankruptcy.

    Imagine the actual cost associated with reinventing the wheel, you build a rocket and toss out the plans and then later you want to build another rocket without the expertise …… well you get the rift.

    Within the area of a baseball stadium, parking lot included, Clear Lake has a massive amount of knowledge, in fact, specialized and very elite knowledge that can probably within a month at lunch, develop a formula that could precisely predict the size of a wave without any markers.

    Plug it into an Excel formula and there you go (I am kidding).

    MEASUREMENT After an event, a satellite can tell me how high the water rose at a given coordinate at a given time, alternatively, we have a target (Hawaii). In the line of the target, what is the height from the shock?

    Given the coordinates of:


    - Sun

    - Moon

    - Target

    What will be the height of the wave and duration at the target?

    Include storm surge predictions, but include “Potential energy” of the system and if possible, predict when should we flatten out the system (hurricane)?

  10. ttyler5 says:

    SAN, xxx,

    Following the 2004 disaster, the UN and the established Pacific Ocean warning systems of the US, Japan and Australia tried to cobble together an early warning system for the Indian Ocean region.

    They managed to get a sensor network set up covering part of the region, and the US and Japanese systems set up communications with Indonesia

    But there was a problem in getting the Indonesian government to relay the warnings to their own citizens:

    However, with the Chilean quake, it appears the bureaucrats in Indonesia and Asia were paying attention this time, there were 50 countries on alert

    xxx, here are the IRIS networks, have you seen these:



    These are primarily research networks but GSN is tied in with USGS/NEIC:

    which in turn is tied in to the World Registry:

  11. xxx says:

    ttyler5 the gov sure does provide a lot of data. Thakns for the sites, I’ll look at them at leisure when I can really devote time to looking power down from exercise.

    With the coastal citizens, gov probaby thinks it would alarm citizens and the stampede would be worse than the surge killing 100,000 people, “But there was a problem in getting the Indonesian government to relay the warnings to their own citizens”

    I do not know the operational and emotional effects of the budget cuts. I suspect NASA budget cuts have the same effect of winding down a company (mergers, acquisition and Bankruptcy.) Hard to keep focus and budgetted hours for time with undefined objectives for canceled projects?

    I found it profitable and, actually, personally enriching to focus staff on short-term and well defined/directed, short-term projects.

    There is an exceptional opportunity for these types of (pie-in-the-sky) projects to profit us, utilizing specific knowledge and skill sets like these while under the cloud of uncertainty.

    There might be potential for career changes from the exposure.

    I think an experienced NASA employee could produce exponentially better than someone else with general knowledge.

  12. ttyler5 says:



    xxx, now of course I don’t have an ROI estimate on this

    — it could be that a high degree of precision in forecasting the wave height and thus the precise extent of coastal inundation

    — might pay off in terms of **avoided costs** in an evac.

    As we learned all too disastrously here in Texas with the Hurricane Rita evac

    — a badly-planned and chaotically-executed mass evacuation effort can turn into a Holocaust very quickly:

    ” 24 nursing home evacuees die in bus fire fleeing Hurrican Rita ”

  13. SAN says:

    Steve C. – OK.. I follow your thought train now. Good moon comment. Similarly, I’ve been having trouble getting enough sleep every since our days got shortened.

    On the down side, don’t believe the moon cared much about the quake. Agree it gradually increases it’s orbit and angular momentum while the earth decreases it’s spin. That’s because of the tidal force they exert on each other. However, the quake didn’t change the earth’s angular momentum, since no new external force was applied during the event. The skater just pulled in her arms a little, so radius went down and angular velocity went up.

  14. ttyler5 says:


    A last note here until I hear back from you

    — NOAA says it takes its Pacific Tsunami Warning Center network about an hour to detect a quake, receive and process the incoming data from remote sensors, determine if the quake has generated a tsunami, and issue a warning (which itself only takes a couple of minutes).

    I don’t have the specs on their sensor network and computer systems

    — so I can’t speculate on a range of configurations and/or a set of improvements that might decrease the time between initial detection and warning.

    But just take a moment to view the area covered by the existing Pacific system:

    And here’s one of the buoys:

    You see how much ocean these waves have got to travel through to reach land.

    So I am sure you can see what a huge infra-structure you are talking about adding if you want to achieve

    — much faster tsunami detection

    — very precise strike zone and inundation projections to reduce evacuation dangers and costs.

  15. xxx says:

    SAN not to mention you get older faster also “…Similarly, I’ve been having trouble getting enough sleep every since our days got shortened…”

    At my age memory and hair escapes me, I am not sure which magazine I read (15 years ago?), but the article said a NASA satelite could tell you within an inch the height of the water anywhere in the world. My question would be, if that is true, what additional infrastructure would we need? Why would we need bouys?

    “…So I am sure you can see what a huge infra-structure you are talking about adding if you want to achieve…”

    Side note do these bouys analyze chemical composition of the water?

  16. Dr. J says:

    The information generated from this giant quake has been invaluable to earth scientists, given their modern, highly precise instruments. Perhaps many read about the impacts on the earth’s orbital characteristics of this quake. Though small, the cumulative effects can be felt in many areas, including climate it turns out. There are some scientists (AGU members) who are embarking on a study of earthquake clusters from past centuries and millenia that could explain the relatively short Milankovitch cycles (less than 5,000 to 500 years full cycle) seen in the geological and paleoclimate records. These cycles are responsible for phenomena like the MWP and the LIA, and perhaps the current minor cyclical warming and cooling seen over the last 200 years. Stay tuned, another place to look for flaws in the AGW hypothesis.

  17. ttyler5 says:

    ” impacts on the earth’s orbital characteristics ”

    Quakes redistribute the earth’s mass

    — I would assume this must also affect the gravitational field models and maps produced by GRACE:

  18. xxx says:

    ttyler5 “Quakes redistribute the earth’s mass” as posted a several months ago, regards the Discovery segment (How the Earth was made) Sahara Dessert the wabble changed climate in the area.

    Without regards to “plate tectonics”, the shift probably throws the earth out of balance until it finds a new equilibrium, like a wheel that needs weights on the rim to keep a tire in balance, a further redstribution might seek his balance.

    There must be some point, at which the earth (spinning) attains a new equalibrium (balance), but at what celestial coordinates.

    I presume the wabble is proof of this out of balance, I believe the program identified the wabble as the contibutor. I did not see a rerun to clarify that.

    If we have a few more major earthquakes, I would look to things we do not know, the stars/astrological events that happen every 10,000 (Newton and all guys like him were astronomernuts, like Eric) event 12/20/2012

  19. ttyler5 says:


    ” … do these bouys analyze chemical composition of the water …”

    I don’t know if they allow multiple uses of the bouys in the Pacific system

    — but the IRIS GSN certainly allows researchers to add other instrument packages:

  20. xxx says:

    I think the Quantum Mechanics guy’s discussion on the mirror and ion and reflectivity, if true, has application to global warming. They mentioned ions (whatever that is) absorb more light?, which volcanoes spew out (Wikipedia).

    I believe the energy in vaopor has more “heat energy potential” than air, so the more you put into the atmosphere the hotter the planet.

    From the Pacific “Ring of Fire” the heat rises over disctnce, the Antarctic and Altantic currents (Wikipedia) carries the heat and ions into the east Atlantic during the winter. Relative to the ambient temperature, the heated water rises into the frigid atmosphere (chimney), the enhanced by the enriched ions and the sunlight enhance the effects of this temperature differential.

    Measure the “ions” and salinity (Water softener) and get the Quantum Mechanicac guys to predict.

    Posted a year ago, while you guys debate that man the planet has warmed, I believe the same debate should be “The planet has not cooled, because…”


    Even though I have never talked to him, I would not doubt the thoughts of a proven genius, like Newton or any other dead guy or society (Aztecs)with proven credentials, merely because I cannot comprehend his proposals. These guys were astronomers.

    Regarding the 12/20/2012 and global warming, the planets align, an event not occuring in 10,000 years, ask Eric?

    Mankind has not had the sophistication to analyze this event. Without sounding like a nut-case, what happens to the electromagnitic field when it aligns, or any other exotic principal we know “must” exist, but have not worked out the details (until it is too late)

  21. ttyler5 says:


    The ancient Mayans did not have a “2012″ myth

    — and there is no such alignment.

    The “2012″ stuff is an anachronistic invention of modern origins.

    It is being promoted by people who also sell Tarot cards and astrology charts.

  22. xxx says:


    They must have money to but TV time on the History Channel “It is being promoted by people who also sell Tarot cards and astrology charts.”

    Gotta look at that channel more objectively. Ever the skeptic.

  23. ttyler5 says:


    History, Discovery channel even NatGeo run this occult/UFO stuff like “2012″ to attract viewers and sell ads.

    The promotion of the 2012 stuff began long before you saw anything on the TV networks, though.

    They are not creating a niche audience, they are tapping into an existing niche created by other promoters.

    It doesn’t take a huge audience to get air time, anymore.

    When we were kids, there were 3 US TV networks and top shows had audiences in the tens of millions. Today, there are hundreds of channels and it only takes a draw of a couple million viewers per screening to make bucks from ads.

    So you just crunch video for a niche audience with the right-size wallets, and run it ’til it chokes.

  24. SAN says:

    XXX – Regarding the buoys, my memories from several years back are that the buoys themselves are simple transmitters for satellite linkage. They are wired to an instrument pack on the ocean floor which monitors pressure. Simple wind-driven surface waves do not affect the pressure, but they read tsunamis loud and clear.

    Regarding the possible use of satellite scans to substitute for the buoys, I can only offer an opinion. You’ve proabably seen the program on rogue waves which shows high resolution scans of wave heights, and indicates there are a lot more 20-30m monsters out there than predicted by the linear wave model. However, these scans are looking at the amplitudes of short surface waves with wavelengths of a few hundred meters tops.

    To detect a tsunami, you would need to measure a wave height of maybe half a meter between crest and trough, with a wavelength of hundreds of kilometers. You must detect this wave against a backdrop of wind-driven wave noise for which the amplitudes dwarf that of the tsunami. That is one seriously lousy signal-to-noise ratio. If you focus on any one point on the ocean surface, the tsunami will make it rise and fall at a rate of maybe an inch a minute, whilst ocean waves jostle the same point up and down several feet a minute.

    Think you can see why the ocean floor detectors are needed. All that water makes for a very nice noise filter.

  25. xxx says:

    Quiet enlightening comments ttyler5 and SAN, nothing I envisioned when I got cable last year, they get away with saying anything, Eric won the lottery and regards the bouys and satelite nothing I had in mind,

    SAN probably right. Probably during Bush I, I had a subscription to Discovery, PM or some other science magazine for a year, I thought the satelite was used for global warming and I thought measured sea height and included temperatures, probably fanticizing. I can see where serious and continuous computing comes in

  26. ttyler5 says:


    I’m sorry, I thought you were familiar with the hardware used on these networks, I just assumed you were just speculating on a possible algorithm for running an intensified version of the calculations.

    Take a look, here’s the latest GSN instrumentation:

    Just google the hardware you aren’t familiar with, the wiki covers a lot of it in fact.

    For example here is the entry on “accelerometer” which is major part of the sensory package:

    It also mentions why I brought up GRACE and shifting local gravity in our earlier conversation

    ” Acceleration is quantified in the SI unit metres per second per second (m/s2), in the cgs unit gal (Gal), or popularly in terms of g-force (g).

    ” For the practical purpose of finding the acceleration of objects with respect to the Earth, such as for use in an inertial navigation system, a knowledge of local gravity is required. This can be obtained either by calibrating the device at rest[3], or from a known model of gravity at the approximate current position.”

  27. xxx says:

    ttyler5, salava I am afraid of running anything. I pushed the tech envelope with every employer and greatly enhanced efficiency/productivity (mostly Access/Excel), ***but I always had tech support when I or someone using my ststems crashed the network, the best support was Enron (they knew me well)

    At home, I am concerned that if I download or run a programb a viruses would crash my PC, without the same support.

    Ptting Humpty Dumpty back together again, not my specialty.

  28. ttyler5 says:


    I follow you.

    Anyway, I was just pointing out some technical/cost barriers to building a detection and warning network with the level of resolution required for carrying out the type of surgically-precise evac we were talking about (capable of reducing evac risks to humans as well reducing evac financial costs).

    But at this point in our global Scientific history, we’ve just barely got some of the major regions covered at all.

    For example, this was the first time the Indonesian warning plan, set up in the years following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, was actually followed by their government.

    However, if technology continues to improve and global coastal population and wealth continues to grow, I can certainly see something like you are talking about, somewhere in the future.

  29. xxx says:

    ttyler5 thanks for following the discussions, I played handball instead of going to geology lab (with teacher’s approval). I have since then been interested in the relationship of earthquakes to tide/moon/sun gravity and the wabble.


    The History Channel had:

    Apocalypse Island (couple hundred miles off the coast of Chile) on again yesterday. The winter solstice aligned with the Center of the universe 12/21/2012 (Long Calendar ends). It happens every 10,000 or 13,000 years.

    The program immediately after: 10,000 BC massive climate change, return of ice age for awhile.