Could Melting Ice Caps Trigger Tsunamis?

See on Scoop.it – Environment

From Charles Q. Choi, OurAmazingPlanet Contributor: If melting ice caps trigger rapid sea level rise, the strain that the edges of continents could experience might set off underwater landslides, new research suggests.

Submarine landslides happen on every continental margin, the underwater parts of continental plates bordering oceanic plates. These underwater avalanches, which can happen when underwater slopes get hit by earthquakes or otherwise have too much weight loaded onto them, can generate dangerous tsunamis.

A staggering half of all the Earth moved by submarine landslides over the past 125,000 years apparently happened between 8,000 and 15,000 years ago. “This time period coincides with the period of most rapid sea level rise following the end of the last ice age,” said study co-author Daniel Brothers, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Coastal and Marine Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass. [10 Tsunamis That Changed History]……

Since these prehistoric disasters coincided with changes in climate, previous research suggested natural global warming might have been their cause, but what exactly the link might be was unclear. To learn more, Brothers and his colleagues generated 3D computer models of the effects of 395 feet (120 meters) of sea level rise on the continental margins off North Carolina and Brazil’s Amazon coast………

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