News From the Field

Scientists Underestimated Potential for Tohoku Quake. Now What?


January 23, 2013

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The massive Tohoku, Japan, earthquake in 2011 and the Sumatra-Andaman superquake in 2004 stunned scientists because neither region was thought to be capable of producing a megathrust earthquake with a magnitude exceeding 8.4. Now, earthquake scientists are going back to the proverbial drawing board and admitting that existing predictive models that look at maximum earthquake size are no longer valid.Full Story

Source
Oregon State University

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