Category Archives: earthquakes

An unremarkable year – seismically, anyway.

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Chris Rowan

Political pundits seem fond of geological metaphors such as ‘earthquake’, ‘seismic shift’, ‘tectonic shift’ and ‘tsunami’ – and they’ve certainly had plenty of reasons to use such metaphors in the past 12 months, as both my birth country and my … Continue reading →

Categories: earthquakes, geology, tectonics

The geodetic fingerprints of shallow thrusting in Nepal

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Chris Rowan

NASA’s Earth Observatory put out this great image last week, which shows the ground displacement in Nepal resulting from last month’s devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which has claimed at least 8,500 lives. The vertical displacements have been calculated by comparing … Continue reading →

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, structures, tectonics

Sumatra +10: contemplating the power of tsunami

Posted on December 26, 2014 by Chris Rowan

Whilst touring Port Lockroy in Antarctica last Christmas Day, one of the exhibits describing the scientific research undertaken there had this interesting footnote: This is pretty mind-blowing, if you think about it: an isolated Antarctic outpost at around 65 degrees … Continue reading →

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, society

L’Aquila earthquake manslaughter verdict reversed

Posted on November 11, 2014 by Chris Rowan

It should come as no surprise that I think that this is the right result: Six seismologists accused of misleading the public about the risk of an earthquake in Italy were cleared of manslaughter on 10 November. An appeals court … Continue reading →

Categories: earthquakes, public science, society