Articles Tagged "Japan Earthquake"

It’s long been known that eruptions on the sun, known as solar flares, produce sunquakes, but now scientists have discovered that bursts of solar wind– known as coronal mass ejections – do as well.

The effect is described as like watching a ripple in a pond when a stone is dropped in - except the 'ripples' can shake the star to its centre.

Scientists led by University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory has shown for the first time that sunquakes can be produced during eruptions of magnetic field and charged particles, as the immense magnetic structure blasts off into the Solar System

The first observation of a sunquake was reported in the late 1990s.

During the last decade it has become well established that explosions in the Sun’s atmosphere, known as solar flares, can create sunquakes through the impact of powerful beams of particles which travel into the Sun.

The moment when the powerful earthquake struck Japan - BBC iPlayer link

A STRING of natural disasters led by the Japanese tsunami and earthquake sent insurance market Lloyd’s of London crashing to its costliest six months on record, as it posted a first-half loss of £697m.

The specialist insurance market’s loss compared with profits of £628m a year earlier, reflecting a total of £6.7bn in claims during the first half, making it the costliest six-month period in Lloyd’s 323-year history.

The unprecedented claims total included £2.7bn in catastrophe-related claims, more than 10 times Lloyd’s average disaster loss during the first six months of the year.

Insurers have been battered by a glut of natural disasters between January and May, resulting in many posting heavy half-year losses.

As well as the devastating Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March, insurers have been hit by New Zealand’s earthquake, heavy flooding in Australia and tornadoes in the US.

Lloyd’s said 2011 is already shaping up to be the second most expensive year ever for insurers. However, the insurance market, which is made up of 88 underwriting syndicates, said it is strong enough to cope with a potential further spate of big claims.

TOKYO — Japan’s economy shrank at an annual rate of 3.7 percent in the first quarter, tipping the country into a recession, as the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disrupted production and prompted consumers to cut back on spending.

The drop-off, reported Thursday, was worse than economists had expected. Among 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, the average projection was for a drop of 1.9 percent.

The figures also indicated Japan’s second consecutive quarter of economic contraction, leading the country, by most assessments, into its second recession in less than three years.

Economists project that the Japanese economy will shrink again in the current quarter, which ends in June, as production continues to falter and weigh on industrial output and exports.

Scientists at the NOAA Vents Program at Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and Oregon State University heard the March 11, 2011 Honshu, Japan earthquake using a hydrophone located near the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents

See also: Hear the REAL sound of the earth moving: Incredible noise captured of moment mega quake triggered Japan's catastrophic tsunami - by Emily Allen - Daily Mail

A strong earthquake shook northern Japan late on Thursday evening, briefly triggering tsunami alerts and renewed fears for the safety of the already damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

People in coastal areas across north-east Japan were told to evacuate to higher ground after the magnitude 7.4 earthquake, while public broadcaster NHK issued warnings of a tsunami of up to three feet along more than 300 miles of coastline north of Tokyo.

Workers at the Fukushima nuclear plant were evacuated by the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., which said there were no reports of injuries among the emergency crews at the plant after the earthquake. The company added that there were no reports of additional problems at the plant, while other nuclear facilities in Ibaraki and Miyagi prefectures also appeared to be operating normally.

The tremor struck just hours before the one-month anniversary of the magnitude 9 earthquake that triggered a tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis. To date, police have confirmed that 12,596 people died as a result of the March 11 quake, while a further 14,747 are listed as missing presumed dead.

See below for more media links with an updated video link from the BBC, and a news report about the 6.5 Earthquake from Mexico

Piers Corbyn has recently posted his latest WeatherAction Earthquake "trial" forecast for April, and I will be reporting on this as the month progresses. The question to answer is, will there be another major Earthquake (7+ or even 8+) accociated with a CME/X flare. It's worth taking another look at the SpaceWeather.com page for March the 10th, and just to read through the X flare event as it unfolded to see if we can match a similar situation during April. One point I came across is that the CME did provoke geomagnetic activity around the poles: CLICK to see FULL report from SpaceWeather.com for 10th March.

....CME IMPACT: A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field on March 10th around 0630 UT. The impact, albeit weak, did provoke geomagnetic activity around the poles. High-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras.

X-FLARE: March 9th ended with a powerful solar flare. Earth-orbiting satellites detected an X1.5-class explosion from behemoth sunspot 1166 around 2323 UT. A movie from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a bright flash of UV radiation plus some material being hurled away from the blast site:



Updated below with comments by Piers Corbyn

Next to Chernobyl, the Fukushima accident is the worst nuclear power calamity in history. To minimize damage in Fukushima’s aftermath, the Japanese — and all of us — need first learn the lessons of Chernobyl, whose casualties numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Chernobyl’s great calamity in 1986 — a total meltdown in a reactor designed with no containment that ejected astounding amounts of radiation over a 10-day period — came not from the radiation it spewed but from fear of radiation.

Because the air, water and food supplies downwind of Chernobyl were contaminated with radiation, the press reported that hundreds of thousands would die of cancer and babies would be born with deformities. These projections came largely from the scientific community, which based its views on the prevailing wisdom of the day and of today — the theory that radiation in any dose, no matter how small, entails risk. “The primary source of information” for this theory, as explained by the United Nations, which has been its chief proponent for more than 50 years — “remains the Life Span Study of the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

The theory is simple enough. High levels of radiation kill, as demonstrated all too convincingly by the atomic bombs that took so many Japanese lives. But low levels of radiation have effects too small to measure, and can’t even be proved statistically because a large enough sample size could never be assembled. Should scientists assume that there’s a threshold dose, below which radiation is held to be harmless? Or is it more prudent to assume that any dose of radiation could be harmful?

Jeremy Clarkson's words of wisdom - Taken from The Sun 26th March 2011

Godzilla: where the hell is he?

One minute, the world is facing nuclear meltdown armageddon to rank with – ooh, Three Mile Island at the very least, and quite possibly Chernobyl. A few (shockingly expensive) missile strikes over Benghazi and Tripoli later, though, and the Japanese nuclear crisis has all but vanished from the face of the earth.

Maybe we should start small wars more often. Or maybe – even better – the MSM could learn to start reporting on nuclear incidents like journalists instead of activists from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.