Green Group discussion

A magnitude 8.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Russia on July 28, and a magnitude 7.3 off the coast of Alaska on July 16. No major damage to human structures because the regions are sparsely populated. Tsunami warnings were issued for both. No damage from the first, still waiting to see what comes from the second.

Starting a week before and continuing during the same time, Mount Rainier has had hundreds of small Earthquakes. The USCS reports that earthquake activity has slowed down from the 41 events per hour on July 8 to a few events per hour by July 25.

Mount Rainier usually sees about nine earthquakes per month. The last earthquake swarm was in 2009 and lasted only three days. The ongoing swarm has far surpassed that in frequency, event rate, and energy release.

According to scientists the Mount Rainer earthquake swarm has nothing to do with volcanic activity. The earthquake activity is happening along the northern boundaries of the Pacific Rim of Fire.

https://creators.yahoo.com/lifestyle/...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/t...

https://www.usgs.gov/observatories/cv...

While it's obviously worrying for anyone in the area, these don't seem to have caused much harm.
I read that a seamount volcano off Alaska is expected to erupt this year.
Possibly the effect will be more a disturbance of seabed sediment and mixing of different levels of temperature and salinity in the water.

That region is coming awake. Volcanic ash has a cooling effect on the atmosphere, it also contains fertilising minerals.

https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2025...

"A volcano has erupted for the first time in 450 years in Russia's eastern Kamchatka region, the nation's emergency authority has said, days after one of the strongest earthquakes on record hit the region.

Pictures released by Russian state media show a towering plume of ash spewing from the Krasheninnikov volcano, which last erupted in 1550, according to the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program."

There was another earthquake in Chile that collapsed part of the world's largest underground copper mine. It is not known if it was a natural quake or it was caused by improper mining techniques, or both. Some infrastructure damage but not widespread, isolated incidents.

2 Earthquakes, 6.1 and 6.3 off the cost of New Zealand July 7. Neither caused much damage. Small residential areas already living in earthquake resistant structures.

All of this is on the Pacific rim of fire. Whatever was happening under Mt Rainer causing lots of earthquake swarms has subsided. Have to wait and see if this indicates a lessening of plate tensions over the pacific rim.

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-...

https://watchers.news/2025/07/07/m6-3...

Authors are nothing if not helpful. I have copied this report from the newsletter of Kate Condie who happened to be on roadtrip vacation with her family members.
Anyone who would like to keep up with Kate's news would no doubt be welcome to subscribe to her e-mail newsletter.


"We were gone from home for a full two weeks. We spent a few days in my husband's hometown among family and walnut trees (dreamy) then we took that family along with us to the Redwoods a few hours away.
First we camped on the actual Avenue of the Giants. Magical.

It's Tuesday, we've arrived at our second campsite near Crescent City, CA. Right on the coast. I mean, we can see the ocean during most of the drive. We stayed at a campground called Mill Creek and we ADORE it.

It's full of huge stumps of redwoods that were milled back in the 1800s when that was legal. If it doesn't make you cry to think about such a prehistoric thing being chopped down, you'll find it's an excellent playground for the kids. Also, there's no cell reception in this campground which I always love. There's something so liberating about being unreachable.

So we're there, our campsites are set up, but we need a few random things from the store. Another can of tomato soup for chili mac, some socks because I somehow packed plenty for my children and not enough for myself, a toothbrush for one child whose disappeared, you get the picture.

We give lists to our husbands and take off in my van (which we've officially dubbed "The Rig" because when it has 4 bikes, and a giant car topper you can't help but be proud of that thing for driving us all over the place). My sister-in-law, Heather and I have the kids around the campfire, we're eating rice crispy treats, we're singing along with the guitar, we're reading spooky stories. Life is great.

Heather steps away to help her kid with a potty break and while she's away my phone (which has no reception) gets one of those jarring alerts, like you'd get if there was a kidnapping in your area. I pull it out, expecting an Amber Alert or some sort, surprised that these still come through when I can't get anything else.

On my screen is an warning, but it's not an amber alert. It's an emergency warning. Here's what saw on my screen.

*** ! Emergency Alert
The National Weather Service has issued a TSUNAMI WARNING.
A series of powerful waves and strong currents may impact coasts near you. You are in danger. Get away from coastal waters. Move to high ground or inland now. Keep away from the coast until local officials say it is safe to return. ***

Now, I don't know about you, but I get Amber Alerts from situations that happened states away. I usually read them with the knowledge that it won't affect me. So there I was, sitting at a campfire with lots of children, my husband had my car and was unreachable.

I wondered, "Do I need to be worried?"

The whole "you are in danger" portion of the message was a little freaky. Also the small detail that we were within a mile of the coastline.

So Heather returns and I show her the message. I say, "Did Blair leave you keys for your truck?" I figure if we needed to evacuate, we could all pile into their vehicle. Except she's not sure the keys aren't in his pocket.

It's fine. I think, in my usual mantra.

Our husbands have cell reception and they can see what's really going on. If it's serious, they'll drive right back and we'll do whatever we need to.

The night wears on and dark settles. We decide emergency warning or not, we should probably get these kiddos to bed. So we carry on as usual.

But as I settle into my own sleeping bag, I can't help but feel uneasy, only not because of the possible tsunami, mostly because it's dark and all that's between me and a potential attacker is a sheet of nylon.

They arrived shortly after, with their own story about how sirens wailed while they were in the store.

But they decided our location was high enough elevation as to not be at risk.

The next morning we drove out of the campsite and checked the news. It turns out that Crescent City, CA had the highest waves of the ENTIRE USA coast (except Hawaii). But they were only 4 feet high. So I'm glad we didn't fret too much.

We ran into some other folks who were evacuated from their hotel room and had to sit on a cliff on high ground until the threat subsided at 1:30am.

That would have been about the worst thing, excepting getting actually hit by a tsunami, of course. Though it would have made for a pretty memorable story."

While the earthquakes during July were accompanied by several volcanic eruptions, both in the area, northern rim of Pacific Ring of Fire, other areas around the Earth also had eruptions. This included Italy, Iceland, Indonesia, Costa Rica, and Hawaii. The number of eruptions was not not unusual.

One set of eruptions was either highly coincidental or could be related to the recent seismic activity. 7 volcanoes are now erupting which weren't erupting last week, in the sparsely populated eastern Russia region.

What is different is that the amount of noxious emissions, especially sulfur dioxide, from these volcanic eruptions is greater than normal. Sulfur dioxide is not a greenhouse gas but it does create acid rain which is not good for anything.

The 2011 Japanese megaquake and tsunami was worsened by a layer of clay, newly discovered by science, somewhere between the continental plates.

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-hidden-...

"Fulton served as co-chief scientist for International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 405, known as JTRACK, which in 2024 collected the study data by deploying a deep-sea research vessel to drill through the fault and into sediment on the Pacific Plate. The expedition achieved a total drill-pipe length of 7,906 meters beneath the sea surface, recognized by Guinness World Records as the deepest scientific ocean drilling ever conducted.

The record highlights both the technical capabilities of the ship and the close collaboration between the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, industry partners and the international science team, said Fulton, who spent nearly two months on the vessel.

The JTRACK expedition builds upon results from an earlier expedition to the region one year after the earthquake, which first identified the weak nature of the shallow plate boundary fault. Fulton, who was involved with the earlier Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project, said the JTRACK results provide a much more complete picture of how the shallow fault zone and incoming sediments are organized.

The sediment samples recovered from the drilling operation revealed a 30-meter-thick layer of pelagic clay, a very soft and slippery material formed from microscopic particles that slowly settled to the sea floor over millions of years. With stronger layers surrounding it, the clay acted like a natural "tear line" that concentrated the rupture along that surface.

"At the Japan Trench, the geologic layering basically predetermines where the fault will form," Fulton said."

More information: J. D. Kirkpatrick, Extreme plate boundary localization promotes shallow earthquake slip at the Japan Trench, Science (2025). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.a...

Journal information: Science

Provided by Cornell University

Another interesting new discovery. The Earth has a molten iron moving core, around an inner core. The moving iron has been found to move in patterns and circles and waves, just as water currents would on the surface.
During 2010, the liquid stream under the North - Equatorial Pacific reversed motion from weakly flowing west - east, to strongly flowing east - west. Maybe this had some influence on the seismic activity in the mantle.

https://phys.org/news/2026-05-earth-o...

"The study, published in the Journal of Studies of Earth's Deep Interior, analyzes both ground observations and satellite data between 1997 and 2025. Data from ESA's Swarm and Cryosat missions were used in the study as well as data from the German CHAMP mission and the Ørsted mission. The research found that in 2010, a broad region of iron-rich fluid beneath the equatorial Pacific switched from moving weakly westwards to strongly eastwards."

More information
Frederik Dahl Madsen et al, Principal component analysis of the 2010 reversal of core-surface flow beneath the Pacific Ocean, Journal of Studies of Earth's Deep Interior (2026).
https://jsedi.episciences.org/article...

More discoveries from the 2011 Japanese earthquake.

https://phys.org/news/2026-06-powerfu...

"A new analysis of data from the quake, led by University of Chicago geophysicist Sunyoung Park, suggests an extraordinary answer: The waves from the earthquake traveled downward to the Earth's core and then back up, displacing the tectonic plates further. This permanently moved the entire island of Japan eastward by up to 6 millimeters.

Seismologists knew that large waves from earthquakes can travel through the Earth and even reverberate off the core. But this is the first time the phenomenon has been identified as causing tectonic plates to slip near the Earth's surface. "It's striking because this is both an unprecedented length and area for a seismic event, and it is a previously unrecognized source of seismic hazard," said Park.

The study was published in Science on June 18."

Publication details
Sunyoung Park et al, ScS-triggered slip on megathrust interfaces after the 2011 M W 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake, Science (2026).
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...
Journal information: Science

June 24, 2026, 3 earthquake events in one day, but it doesn't mean anything special according to seismologists who confirmed the events were entirely unrelated. While the events were entirely unrelated, the synchronized timing caused global concern.

Four powerful independent earthquakes struck Venezuela, Japan, and Northern California within a 8 hour period.

Venezuela experienced its most destructive earthquake sequence in over 125 years. A state of emergency has been declared.

In Venezuela there were two earthquakes, of magnitudes 7.2 & 7.5, 3 miles apart, less than a minute apart, one at a depth of 6 miles, which caused considerable surface damage. The other was at a deeper depth.
164 people have died and 973 were injured. The Simón Bolívar International Airport was closed due to severe structural failure. There could be more damage due to old buildings collapsing.

The high vulnerability of local infrastructure and population density led to the issuance of a USGS Red Alert for both economic and human losses Venezuela.

Shortly after the Venezuelan earthquakes, a powerful magnitude 6.9 earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan. Only light damage was recorded.

Earlier in the day at 8:10 a.m. PST, Northern California had a magnitude 5.6 earthquake centered near Redwood Valley and Willits in Mendocino County. This tremor marked the strongest earthquake to hit the region since 1940. It caused scattered local power outages for a couple of thousand people, broken windows and items falling off of shelves in stores.

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/24/nx-s1-...

The airport being badly damaged means it will be harder for aid agencies like the UN to get in with help. They will need to send a ship.

The double Venezuelan earthquake damaged tens of thousands of buildings. The first quake, magnitude 7.2, hit north-central Venezuela near Yumare. Thirty-nine seconds later, a larger magnitude 7.5 ruptured at almost the same spot, along the fault that marks the boundary between the Caribbean and South American plates. A satellite analysis distributed by NASA's disaster program flags nearly 59,000 buildings along the coast as likely damaged.

The death toll keeps climbing, as well as those injured, because of the severity of the earthquakes impact on cities and towns. Almost 3,000 people have been reported dying in the quakes, with 11,267 reported as injured. The number of people missing is still approximately 50,000.

A 2 year old boy and a security guard were rescued about a week after the quakes, which is an extraordinary event.

12 miles away at Galfa Point in Trinidad. a sandy beach and seabed were raised 20 feet upwards. The land has been permanently uplifted. The land dipped down at the adjacent hillside and cliffside directly behind the beach which pushed the sea bed up.

While lots of the buildings were made using older construction techniques, that doesn't matter The extreme shifting of the land shows that no matter how earthquake proof a building is, if the land moves too much, there are going to be a lot of casualties.

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/01/nx-s1-...

"The 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes killed about 5,000 people, according to the government, though experts including ​the United States Geological Survey have predicted a likelihood of a final death toll of nearly double that figure. The disaster was especially devastating in La Guaira state, home to the country's ‌main airport, a major port and hundreds of high-rise residential buildings that collapsed either fully or partially."

The military response was delayed by lack of planning and lack of equipment. The military budget was more concerned about the payroll than readiness to respond in a national emergency. This is true of most military services because their main priority is the security of the country based on whatever is believed to be needed.

The destruction caused by climate change and natural disasters has escalated over the years. The immediate destruction needs to be attended as soon as the situation starts developing. The military has, or is supposed to have, should have the equipment and manpower needed to respond to these kinds of situations.

Lack of power, downed communications, disrupted transportation, are all things any military should be able to instantly respond to. In the hours and days after an emergency situation develops, people's medical needs, both daily needs and emergency, become second place or non existent because local services are not available or up to the size of the task. Food and water also needs to stat moving into the affected areas.

Civilian sources, such as municipal or volunteer are typically the first to respond the first to respond. The problem is that the scale of the disasters and size of climate events can now easily overwhelm the local operations.

While the military in Venezuela was not able to respond immediately in full force, in this case that probably had little impact on the large number of casualties. The building construction and lack of response equipment was a large part of the situation. The destruction of the commercial infrastructure had a huge impact in delaying the response.

https://www.reuters.com/business/envi...