Breaking: Huge Earthquake in Indian Ocean
Drudge Report has the current headline: 8.5 mag quake rocks Indian Ocean, triggering tsunami warning.
UPDATE at 3/28/05 9:52:12 am:
Scientists at the University of Ulster issued an earthquake warning for this area of Sumatra after an analysis of fault zones last week.
The stresses in the earth’s crust which have resulted from the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake have significantly increased the risk of another large earthquake in the already-devastated Indonesian island of Sumatra, according to new research findings by scientists from the University of Ulster’s School of Environmental Sciences.
According to their calculations, published in this week’s edition of leading scientific journal Nature, the Christmas 2004 earthquake which generated the massive tsunami which hit Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka and killed 300,000 people, has significantly increased the stress on two other fault zones in the area - one of them running directly under the city of Banda Aceh which was so badly effected by the Boxing day event - the other under the sea off the west coast of Sumatra.
The latter could generate another tsunami.
The University of Ulster team, led by Professor John McCloskey of the School of Environmental Sciences, analysed data from the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake to look at its impact on other faults in the area. The analysis process is described in the Notes For Editors below.
The analysis found two zones showing significantly increased levels of stress - one in the Sunda trench, a 50km-long underwater zone off the northern tip of Sumatra, and the other in the Sumatra fault, which runs for 300km along the centre of the island of Sumatra, ending under the city of Banda Aceh.