Pacific Subduction Zone

This isn't a global warming issue, but something with possibly greater destruction of the Pacific Northwest if it were to occur in this century.  With regard to global warming, the Pacific Northwest is far better protected from its consequences than most other parts of the world, except for the loss of all the sea life we've been accustomed to consuming, shrimp, oysters, and salmon, lost to ocean acidification.  Of course global warming might mean huge migration to here from other parts of North America creating a very bad situation, but otherwise we might be ok for quite awhile.

However, as the New Yorker pointed out, we are vulnerable to a truly gigantic earthquake generated along the Pacific Subduction Zone, which they descriptively call "The Really Big One" "destroying a sizeable portion of the Pacific Northwest". 

Check out the article, it's a bit sobering.  But what I will be doing as part of the Diary, is report on earthquakes occurring along the Subduction Zone.  I believe that as long as there is a nice 5.0 or so every month we should be ok.  Let that Pacific Plate push down below the continental plate gradually, a 5.0 at a time.  If we go for some time, a year or so without one, I think we will need to start worrying, at least those of us living west of I5. 

Since I've been following them there've been six quakes on the Subduction zone since March 25th:

  • 3-25    4.9 earthquake 151km SSW of Port Hardy, Canada
  • 4-10    4.8 earthquake 163km W of Ferndale, California
  • 4-23    5.5 earthquake 253km W of Ferndale, California
  • 4-24    6.1 earthquake 187km WSW of Bella Bella, Canada
  • 6-1      5.5 earthquake Off the coast of Oregon
  • 7-29    4.8 earthquake 183km W of Port Hardy, Canada
The last one yesterday.  I'll keep you posted as they happen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alaska Crushes Record For Hottest December

Image
Alaska crushes record for hottest December as Arctic sea ice hits record low In its hottest December ever recorded, Alaska was a stunning 15.7°F above the 20th century average. And the year ended with Arctic sea ice hitting an all-time record low. While the East Coast had a cool December and New Year’s week, Alaska baked. Last Tuesday, Anchorage hit 48°F , warmer than southern cities from Atlanta and Jacksonville to Houston and New Orleans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported this week that Alaska averaged 19.4°F for the month, topping the previous record (1985) by a whopping 2.1°F. “That’s really quite astonishing,” said Rick Thoman, the National Weather Service’s climate sciences and services manager for the Alaska region. As he explained to the Anchorage Daily News , “Usually you’re breaking those by a tenth of a degree or two-tenths of a degree.” The Arctic as a whole was so warm in December that Arctic sea ice set a new end-of-year record lo
Read more

The World My Grandchildren Will Inherit

Image
I went to a presentation at the University of Washington by Professor Raftery of the Statistics and Sociology Departments of a recent paper of his and colleagues (Alec Zimmer, Dargan M.W. Frierson, Richard Startz, and Peiran Liu) in the Journal Nature, entitled Less than 2 °C warming by 2100 unlikely   (link behind a paywall) . Their paper is a response to a need to provide a statistical forecast for global temperatures.  What the IPCC has previously provided are "scenarios" based on "expert" thinking.  Raftery has previously developed statistical methods for estimating world-wide migration patterns that has been adopted by the United Nations.  At the presentation he presented a statistical model for forecasting global temperatures. Their result is a 90% interval forecast of 2 to 4.9 degrees Centigrade with a median of 3.2 degrees. Their backtesting strongly supported the median.  He also  said " that the data suggested that future improvements in ca
Read more