Since Sunday October 25th a series of small earthquakes occurred in the Canton of Glarus, near the village of Elm. The largest event so far was magnitude 4.4, the focal depths are shallow (ca. 1-2 km). So far no damage was reported. Further information and news are available at the Swiss Seismological Service.
End of field season
The field season is likely finished as the first snow felt the day after this photo was taken…
Seismic hazard and risk in Bhutan
Together with a group of colleagues with complementary expertise, we present the first modern seismic hazard and risk assessment in the Bhutan Himalaya in form of a paper accepted for publication in Natural Hazards: http://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-04275-3.
The results on an interactive map, the raw data and the model (OpenQuake) files are available online HERE.
Lockdown lowers ambient seismic noise
The “lockdown” lowering the level of environmental ground vibrations has found wide attention already in the Spring in social media and on websites (here is our news). The full scientific treatment with examples from around the world, including our from project in Nepal, is now published in Science:
Lecocq and 75 others: Global quieting of high-frequency seismic noise due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdown measures. doi:10.1126/science.abd2438
[FR] Voici un résumé de l’article en français, et un interview dans Le Temps.
Field season
The summer field season could luckily start!… although the weather conditions are not always ideal. Our gravimeter has also shown in real time the passage of surface waves from a M7.4 earthquake near the antipode.
Ivrea body gravimetry paper accepted
Less than 3 years after starting new gravimetry surveys in the Ivrea-Verbano Zone to better constrain the 3D geometry of the shallow-lying Ivrea geophysical body, our paper on the results has been just accepted at Geophysical Journal International – see Scarponi et al. (2020): New gravity data and 3D density model constraints on the Ivrea Geophysical Body (Western Alps).
Dʹoù viennent les tremblements de terre ?
Lors du confinement du printemps 2020 et la fermeture des écoles, le radio RTS La 1ère a transformé son programme Vacarme pour devenir Brouhaha. Un jour, un thème, sur lequel les enfants peuvent poser des questions et auront des réponses par un expert, accompagné d’une histoire imaginaire. Le 6 mai le sujet était les tremblements de terre, et l’histoire racontait le sort du dragon Ronchonchon! Vous pouvez réécouter toute l’émission ici, ou l’histoire seule ici.
Nepal project features in Eos
Following our paper’s publication on the Seismology-at-school-in-Nepal project earlier this month, a nice and comprehensive summary article features in AGU’s Eos magazine, written by Rachel Fritts.
Coronavirus reduces manmade Earth vibrations
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads across various regions with more and more people (semi-)confined, there are multiple observations that manmade environmental noise is reduced. The level of this vibration decrease varies spatially. Here are our contributions:
- in Nepal,
- as part of a global comparison,
- at our now empty workplace,
- dans un article dans Le Temps.
Two earthquakes near Zagreb
Two M5+ earthquakes hit Zagreb this morning, causing a lot of damage in the historical centre. The magnitude 5.4 event hit at 6:24 in the morning (local time), the second (M5.0) shortly after 7h. The waveforms are clearly recorded at our test station near Sion, in the Valais, 670 km away. Zooming on the wave onset of the two events reveals a high level of similarity; the earthquakes likely happened on the same fault.
