What’s up? The Friday links (52)

The RealClimate blog network published two long articles on the state of the art of sea level rise estimations. Part 1 was written by Stefan Rahmstorf on 9 Jan, part 2 was posted today. What will we need to prepare for until the end of the century? 

Seminar talk on lithosphere shear zones at GED, RWTH Aachen University

On 15 January, a talk on the structure, strength and anisotropy of lithosphere shear zones will be given by Martyn Drury from Utrecht University in the framework of the NUGGED seminars at RWTH Aachen University. Our friends from the institute of Structural Geology, Tectonics and Geomechanics organized this talk which will take place at 13:30, Room 4.08, Lochnerstrasse 4-20, 52064 Aachen, Germany.

Fatal landslides in China

Almost everytime I read Dave Petley’s landslide blog he comes up with bad news, but also, with good articles. Read his latest entry on the fatal landslides in China here.

I found the following video of an impressive earthflow close to Salzburg, Austria at the Landslide Blog, too:

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Defeating earthquakes? A TED talk by Ross Stein

Is it possible to defeat an earthquake? Maybe yes, in the sense of not letting have it bad consequences. Listen to Ross Stein’s great TED talk on earthquake safe buildings and anti-seismic measures.

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San Andreas fault to rupture in one state-wide EQ?

Current research says: “Maybe.” Modelling the San Andreas with its middle part that was thought to act as a barrier between southern and northern earthquake rupture propagation shows a possibility of this assumption being wrong. Read the LA Times article for a summary and replace “paleogeologist” with “paleoseismologist”, or read the Nature paper here:

Noda, H., Lapusta, N. 2013. Stable creeping fault segments can become destructive as a result of dynamic weakening. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature11703.

List of GIS-related blogs

Our colleagues from Digital Geography (visit their site if you have any GIS question) pointed me to this great collection of ~90 GIS-related blogs on the web.

A new submarine volcano in the Mediterranean?

During the last month or so some reports came up with news about a new submarine volcano that might have erupted or at least become active off Turkey, between the Turkish coast and the Greek islands of Simi and Rhodes. Here’s the english article from Volcano Discovery, linking to the Turkish news sources that I am not able to read, unfortunately. So I checked the EMSC earthquake database of that region for the last weeks. Surprise! It looks like the aftershock distribution of a moderate EQ on a N-S trending fault, but there was no event like this. Volcanic activity along a fissure could also explain what we see, shallow, weak quakes, and a number of them:

Earthquakes in the southeastern Aegean Sea since 2012-11-01. All magnitudes and depths. Data and vizualisation from EMSC, using the earthquake database search.

A moderate earthquake in the Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea was, however, rattled by an earthquake last week, but further to the north. The magnitude was M5.7 and intensities up to V (EMS-98) have been reported. EMSC did-you-feel-it-data suggest that it was strongly felt in Sofia, but I doubt that felt reports from Bucharest are correct:

EMSC felt report distribution. Source: EMSC

Anti-seismic fabric for earthquake protection now on the market

ScienceDaily reports that anti-seismic “Sisma Calce” fabric is coming to the market now. The idea is that glass fibres in the fabric will be strong enough to prevent people being hurt or killed by falling debris. This might be cheaper as other retrofit measures and far better than doing nothing. Maybe a good solution for developing countries that are situated in earthquake-prone areas?

Have a nice weekend!

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