With the AGU meeting in town, it was a great week for science news! We covered several topics on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday—and we’ll highlight a few more of them here for you.

Monday’s sessions included several discussions about the 2011 Tohoku tsunami in Japan—its effects on the local population and on far-reaching areas as well as how we can forecast future events.

One of the biggest surprises came during a presentation by Satoko Oki of the Earthquake Research Institute. She collected data from Japanese residents before and after the 2011 tsunami and found them less prepared for tsunamis after the Tohoku hit! When polled post 2011, they misidentified the minimum wave height from which to evacuate. They had correctly identified the minimum height less than a year before. The 80beats blog in Discover identifies the problem succinctly:

The Tohoku tsunami was so large–about 130 feet–that it may have dragged people’s expectations of what’s dangerous higher.

Another presentation revealed why the tsunami was so devastating—it was a “merging tsunami.” NASA researchers found that the tsunami doubled in intensity over rugged ocean ridges, amplifying its destructive power at landfall. This animation on NASA’s website illustrates the direction and power quite well.

The discovery helps explain how tsunamis can cross ocean basins to cause massive destruction at some locations while leaving others unscathed. The data raise hope that scientists may be able to improve tsunami forecasts.

Switching perspective from the oceans to outer space… NASA and NOAA held a joint workshop Tuesday on preparing for the solar max. As solar storms increase over the next 20 months or so, we can be prepared for what might and might not happen. This might remind you of a press briefing held earlier this year at the AAAS meeting that we covered here. It certainly reminded us how active the Sun can be, even during quiet times, as shown in this beautiful NASA video of SDO’s first year in space.

Finally, the Academy’s own Peter Roopnarine presented at the meeting on his research on oysters in the Gulf of Mexico. With colleagues, Peter has been testing for contaminants in the shells of oysters before and after the spill and hopes to model the spread of contaminants to other species through the food web. Check out this Science in Action video to learn more.

Image: Samuel Morse/US Air Force/Wikipedia

Up-to-date Information can be found here.

Videos, Animations and Images

In case you haven’t seen them—these are stunning and terrifying.

• -The devastating tsunami sweeping through the Miyagi Prefecture can be seen here and here.
• -Tokyo buildings swaying during the earthquake here.
• -A NOAA animation and image of the tsunami movement
• -Images and video of Santa Cruz harbor destruction.

Science Behind the Earthquake

Find out how earthquakes work from BoingBoing and how tsunamis are triggered far away from earthquake’s epicenter from Scientific American. The 80beats blog on Discover breaks down what happened and explains why it could have been worse. And the New York Times has an article about Japan’s strict building codes.

Tsunami in California

Why has Crescent City been so hard hit? Location, location, location, according to Time.

Supermoon?

The Daily Mail linked the full, close moon coming on March 19^th with this earthquake in tsunami. Baloney say scientists. Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted, “Interviewed often today. Press wants to blame Japanese quake on cosmos. The Moon is innocent. Blame plate tectonics. Period.”

More:

• -How you can help.
• -Subscribe to USGS Earthquake Notification Service
• -The latest on California State Park closures.
• -Earthquake blog from UC Davis.

Add to the list, please!

The devastating earthquake was unusual in some ways: scientists in the field found no evidence of surface rupture on the source Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault, certain areas believed to be on solid ground were hit harder than expected, and the resulting tsunamis surprised geologists because the lateral motion of strike-slip faults rarely cause tsunamis.

The first paper shifts the fault, literally. USGS and NASA/JPL scientists, working with others, used a combination of seismological observations, geologic field data, and satellite geodetic measurements to analyze the earthquake source. Their finding? The large earthquake resulted not from the Enriquillo fault, as previously believed, but from slip on multiple faults—primarily a previously unknown, subsurface fault.

In addition, because the earthquake did not involve slip near Earth’s surface, the study suggests that it did not release all of the strain that has built up on faults in the area over the past two centuries, meaning that future surface-rupturing earthquakes in this region are likely.

The second paper looks at the localized damage of the earthquake. After the major event, USGS scientist Susan Hough and her team set out seismographs that recorded aftershocks. Those recordings revealed that ground motions were amplified by the relatively young and soft rocks that underlie the valley in which Port-au-Prince lies. The strongest observed amplifications occurred along a narrow, steep foothill ridge in the city. That means that topography influenced the severity of aftershocks, too.

From the New York Times:

Seismologists know that local geology can also affect the severity of an earthquake… Now [this] new study finds that in addition to the underlying geology, the geometry of local surface features contributed to the earthquake’s intensity as well.

The study suggests that topographic effects should be considered when detailed hazard zone maps are made for other regions.

From OurAmazingPlanet:

Pinning down how topography amplifies an earthquake’s energy — be it by steepness or width of a ridge, for example — will take longer, said the authors, but the initial findings could help guide the rebuilding effort.

Finally, the third paper finds that the tsunamis did not direct result directly from the quake, but most likely arose from underwater landslides triggered by the shaking. An article in National Geographic Daily News wonders what this could mean for our own earthquake-prone state. The good news is that, according to the article, “the risk of tsunamis… has already been included in California’s preparedness plans.”

The more we understand about the science of this terrible event, the better prepared we’ll be whenever and wherever it happens next.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/JAXA/METI

According to Universe Today:

There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection (CME) and more.

(In a separate, very recent post, Universe Today reported that there are actually four CMEs.)

Solar scientists are thrilled! “This has been an unusually quiet solar cycle,”(Universe Today) and the sun is just now waking up, heading for its solar max in May 2013.

This “awesome solar phenomena”(Wired) is also good news for us non-scientists. Wired reports that:

The event also caused a coronal mass ejection to head directly toward earth, which may mean people in the northern latitudes will be treated to auroras around August 3.

Can’t solar flares also mean trouble? This one isn’t big enough. According to MSNBC:

The X-ray blast rated a C3 on the Space Weather Prediction Center’s scale, which suggests there’ll be no disruption for power grids, satellites, astronauts on the International Space Station or navigation services on airplanes.

So depending on your location (San Francisco seems too far south in the current NOAA POES satellite image), sit back, take a look at the skies tonight and tomorrow and enjoy the pretty picture show. (Universe Today has just posted possible times of the auroras.)  And even if you can’t see the auroras, you can see SDO’s amazing video of the activity here or here.

Image: NASA/SDO

One researcher has looked for clues to solar weather in the meridional flow, which moves from the solar equator toward the poles, and which seems to change speed during the shifting solar cycle. Another looked at the solar “jet stream,” a slow current that originates at solar midlatitudes and pushes in a bifurcated stream toward both the equator and the poles. Another scientist examined the inner workings of the sun through the oscillation of sound waves propagating through the solar interior; yet another looked at magnetic maps to chart the shifting flux across the sun.

(This quote is thanks to Scientific American.)

In other words, we still have a lot to learn about our very own star.

In fact, in 1997, NASA’S Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) imaged the eruption of an active region on the surface of the Sun that resulted in a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Such an eruption is a gigantic belch of charged particles and radiation that, when they reach Earth, can cause disruptions in radio transmission, power outages, and luminous atmospheric displays known as the auroras.

At the same time, SOHO also captured what looked like a shock wave that radiated out from the eruption along the Sun’s surface, like a tsunami.  Solar scientists weren’t quite sure what this apparent “solar tsunami” was – were they witnessing actual wave propagation or just seeing the shadow of the ejected material?

None of SOHO’s subsequent images shed enough light on the phenomenon to answer the question, but last fall, the twin spacecraft of NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) imaged a solar eruption from two different angles simultaneously, establishing that what was observed in 1997 was indeed a shock wave that interacted with other features on the Sun – in one instance causing a solar prominence to wave like a flag in the wind.

Studies of this “fast-mode magnetohydrodynamical waves,” as they’re now known, indicate that they tower above the surrounding surface to a height more than a half-dozen times Earth’s diameter, rippling outward at half a million miles per hour.  Analysis of the behavior of these waves can help determine the structure of the Sun’s lower atmosphere and pinpoint the exact location of the solar flares that emit CMEs.  Knowing that, scientists are better able to tell whether or not CMEs may be aimed toward Earth and anticipate any effects from them.

Image: A solar tsunami seen by the STEREO spacecraft