Giant and silent waves: Megatsunami shook the entire planet, study says

A study published in the journal Science revealed that an international team of researchers came together to investigate a mysterious seismic signal recorded on the planet in 2023. During the search for the origin of the tremors, Scientists discovered that the likely cause was a 200-meter megatsunami, and it apparently went unnoticed by everyone.

It may be the cause of the tsunami With the collapse of a mountain in the East Greenland Sea, It triggered a mega-tsunami that violently shook the ocean for nine days. During this period, several seismic waves were recorded in the Earth’s crust, and the area likely produced ‘rhythmic waves’ that destroyed part of the infrastructure of a nearby research station.

The megatsunami occurred in September 2023 and the waves may have reached as high as 110 metres. The water rose about 200 metres as part of the mountain collapsed into the sea.

Scientists predict that The collapsed mountaintop was about 1.2 kilometers high and caused a wave that traveled 10 kilometers. Fortunately, this height quickly dropped to seven meters within minutes, and then to just a few centimeters as the days went by.

“When we set out on this scientific adventure, it was of great interest to everyone, and no one had the slightest idea what was causing this seismic signal. All we knew was that it was somehow connected to the landslide. We were only able to solve this enigma through a huge, interdisciplinary and international effort,” said Kristian Svennevig, lead author of the study and a geologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS).

Tsunami in Greenland

The study suggests that climate change may be partly responsible for the collapse, as researchers believe The glacier at the foot of the mountain has undergone a melting process that has disrupted the balance of millions of cubic metres of rock and iceThe results were obtained through computer simulations.

In total, it is estimated that Approximately 25 million cubic metres of rock and ice fell into the sea, causing one of the largest tsunamis recorded in recent years. There was no one in the landslide area, so no one immediately realized that such an extreme event had occurred. The discovery was made only later thanks to mysterious seismic waves that were recorded.

“It was exciting to work with an interdisciplinary and international team of scientists on such an intriguing problem. Ultimately, it took a lot of geophysical observations and numerical modeling by researchers in many countries to put the pieces of the puzzle together and get a full picture of what happened,” said Robert Anthony, one of the authors and a geophysicist in the Earthquake Hazards program of the United States Geological Survey.

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