seismology

Animation of the Italy Earthquake’s Seismic Velocity

Video

A “real-time” animation of the seismic (vertical) velocity of Italy’s 5.5 Mw earthquake that hit between the Aquila and Rieti provinces. The second half of the animation shows the whole country and surrounding area.

Real-time indicates that the video reflects how the waves propagated in real-time. It’s neither slowed down not sped up.

Red color indicates relatively higher vertical velocities indicating the ground is moving upwards while the blue color indicates the lower (negative) velocities indicated a downward movement of the ground. Color intensity refers to the magnitude.

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Sound of the Moving Earth

Audio

What do you think an earthquake would sound like if you could hear it?

Here’s a sample (opens in a new tab).

The audio was generate by processing seismic data.

More samples are available on from the source where you can also find the corresponding spectrograms, (i.e. the representation of the frequency content of the signal and how it varies in time).

via Zhigang Peng @ Georgia Institute of Technology

Credit: Peng, Z., C. Aiken*, D. Kilb, D. Shelly, B. Enescu (2012), Listening to the 2011 magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan earthquake, Seismol. Res. Lett., 83(2), 287-293, doi: 10.1785/gssrl.83.2.287. , and Kilb, D., Z. Peng, D. Simpson, A. Michael and M. Fisher* (2012), Listen, watch, learn: SeisSound video products, Seismol. Res. Lett., 83(2), 281-286, doi: 10.1785/gssrl.83.2.281.

As a follow-up here’s a nice video from USGS

Educational Visualization Tool for Global Seismic Seismology

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Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, IRIS, provides an educational visualization tool to aid in teaching about global seismology. Specifically it simulates how P-waves and S-waves travel from the epicenter on the surface of the Earth as well as through Earth’s interior.

It also provides annotations of each travelling ray as it reflects or refracts through the different layers along with their corresponding seismograms. Check it out here (opens in a new tab).

If you are a student, teacher, or just interested I invite you to check out the various learning and teaching resources available from IRIS.

How Earthquakes and Volcanoes Reveal the Beating Heart of the Planet

Link

How Earthquakes and Volcanoes Reveal the Beating Heart of the Planet, via Smithsonian Magazine – Journey to the Center of Earth

breathingearth

Earthquake Seismic Waves modeled using Ifrasound

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Citation: Jacobsen, E. (2016), Seismic wave videos combine sight and sound, Eos, 97, doi:10.1029/2016EO060261. Published on 04 October 2016.