EARTHQUAKES IN TURKEY MOVED THE COUNTRY BY UP TO 3 METRES, ITALIAN SEISMOLOGIST SAYS

Wed 08 February 2023:

On Monday, strong earthquakes shook Turkey and several areas of Syria, wreaking havoc on both human life and property. The death toll from the earthquake is currently above 7,000, but it is anticipated to grow.

Meanwhile, disturbing news has emerged that the tectonic plate it rests on may have moved by up to three meters as a result of the earthquakes.

Two powerful earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 rocked Turkey and Syria. The rescue effort was delayed by many aftershocks.

Near the Turkish city of Gaziantep, the epicenter of Monday’s earthquake was located at a depth of around 17.9 kilometers. There are almost two million people living in the city.

Later experts revealed that the earthquake was caused by the Arabian tectonic plate moving northward. Turkey is prone to earthquakes as it sits above major faultlines, bordering the Anatolian Plate, Arabian Plate and Eurasian Plate.

According to the meteorologists, about a 225 km stretch of the fault between the Anatolian Plate and the Arabian Plate has been damaged.

Dr Carlo Doglioni, who is an Italian seismologist told the news site Italy 24, that after the earthquake, Turkey could even have slipped by up to “five to six metres compared to Syria”.

As quoted by media reports, Dr Doglioni, who is a president of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, said that “what we call the Arabian plate moved about three meters along the northeast-southwest direction in relation to the Anatolian plate; we are talking about a structure in the border area between this world, that of the Arabian plate and that of the Anatolian plate”.

Although, he did mention that more information is needed to produce a concrete result the analysis is based on preliminary data.

Meanwhile, a Daily Mail report quoted Dr Bob Holdsworth, a professor of structural geology at Durham University, as saying that the plate shift was “perfectly reasonable” considering the magnitude of the earthquake.

“There is a fairly predictable, widely documented relationship between the magnitude of an earthquake and the typical offset that occurs,” Dr Holdsworth told Daily Mail.

“As a rule of thumb, a magnitude 6.5 to 6.9 event is associated with an offset of around one metre – whilst the largest known earthquakes can involve offsets of 10 to 15 metres,” he added.

“The faults that slipped yesterday in Turkey are strike-slip faults that involve mainly horizontal displacements, and so the overall offsets in the region of 3 to 6 metres proposed here are perfectly reasonable,” he further said.

Check out the animated seismicity map of Turkey’s earthquakes showing the progression of aftershocks. https://t.co/XkA0fLNcPU

— USGS (@USGS) February 7, 2023

UPDATED: More information on the M7.8 #earthquake that occurred overnight in Turkey can be found here: https://t.co/IZ83eOTExL

Our thoughts go out to those affected. pic.twitter.com/2hWnbGlPZe

— USGS (@USGS) February 6, 2023