?Climate Change Causing Earthquakes
Climate change is known to lead to various natural disasters, such as extreme weather, floods, landslides, and droughts. But does the climate crisis also affect the occurrence of earthquakes
Jane Cunneen, Adjunct Research Fellow at Curtin University said that climate change not only affects the weather and sea level but also has an impact on the movement of the earth’s plates. Other scientists say earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, major landslides, and tsunamis could be occurring more frequently due to climate change. “The climate crisis is affecting not only the oceans and atmosphere but also the entire earth’s crust,” said Bill McGuire, a volcanologist and Emeritus Professor of Geophysics and Climate Hazards from University College London
According to McGuire, the earth and everything in it is an interactive system that influences one to another. Climate change that causes the melting of ice at the north pole makes the earth’s crust bounce back and triggers movements of the earth’s crust that cause earthquakes. When an earthquake occurs, the potential for underwater landslides also increases, which then results in a tsunami
David Pyle, a scientist from Oxford University also stated that the slightest change in the mass of the earth’s surface and weather patterns also affect volcanic activity in general. This implies that climate change, which is closely related to weather patterns, is of course related to what happens to volcanoes
Meanwhile, Chi-Ching Liu from the Institute of Earth Science at Taipei’s Academica Sinica also proved that there is a relation between climate change and earthquakes. Based on the results of his research published in the journal Nature in 2009, he saw that when a typhoon occurred in Taiwan, at the same time an undersea earthquake with a small magnitude occurred under the island. In his research, Liu explained, the reduced atmospheric pressure during typhoons makes earthquake faults in the earth’s crust move more easily, thereby increasing the potential for earthquakes
Scientists also believe that since 1973, the arrival of the El Nino, a phenomenon of warming sea surface temperatures, is related to the frequency of underwater earthquakes with magnitudes 4 to 6. Increasing the water volume on the earth creates the increasing pressure of fluid flow in the pores of the rocks on the seabed. This is what then triggers a shift in the earth’s plates on the seabed, which causes earthquakes
Climate change has long been known to cause a lot of damage and bring various threats to life on earth. This is a loud alarm for all of us to start taking action in efforts to adapt and mitigate climate change, in order to make the earth a better place to live in the future
Bustar Maitar, CEO of EcoNusa Foundation believes that climate change is not a hoax. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated that we all must start taking steps to adapt and mitigate climate change. “We can play a role by becoming environmental influencers for the people around us. Do good things for the earth consistently so that other people will follow our actions,” said Bustar
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