From: Andy Soos, ENN
Published April 19, 2013 02:04 PM

Superstorm Sandy "Earthquake"

Earthquakes shake the land obviously. So do explosions and similar events. How about a hurricane? When superstorm Sandy turned and took aim at New York City and Long Island last October, ocean waves hitting each other and the shore rattled the seafloor and much of the United States — shaking detected by seismometers across the country, University of Utah researchers found.


"We detected seismic waves created by the oceans waves both hitting the East Coast and smashing into each other," with the most intense seismic activity recorded when Sandy turned toward Long Island, New York and New Jersey, says Keith Koper, director of the University of Utah Seismograph Stations.

"We were able to track the hurricane by looking at the microseisms [relatively small seismic waves] generated by Sandy," says Oner Sufri, a University of Utah geology and geophysics doctoral student and first author of the study with Koper. "As the storm turned west-northwest, the seismometers lit up."

Sufri was scheduled to present the preliminary, unpublished findings in Salt Lake City Thursday, April 18 during the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting.

There is no magnitude scale for the microseisms generated by Sandy, but Koper says they range from roughly 2 to 3 on a quake magnitude scale. The conversion is difficult because earthquakes pack a quick punch, while storms unleash their energy for many hours.

The shaking was caused partly by waves hitting the East Coast, but much more so by waves colliding with other waves in the ocean, setting up standing waves that reach the seafloor and transmit energy to it, Sufri and Koper say.

While many people may not realize it, earthquakes are not the only events that generate seismic waves. So do mining and mine collapses; storm winds, waves and tornadoes; traffic, construction and other urban activities; and meteors hitting Earth. Indeed anything that hits the earth, expands against the earth, or just vibrates against the earth will cause a seismic wave.

"They are not earthquakes; they are seismic waves," says Koper, a seismologist and associate professor of geology and geophysics. "Seismic waves can be created by a range of causes.   We have beautiful seismic records of the meteor that hit Russia. That’s not an earthquake, but it created ground motion."

While Sandy’s seismicity may be news to many, Koper says microseisms just as strong were detected before and after the superstorm from North Pacific and North Atlantic storms that never hit land but created "serious ocean wave action."

Koper adds: "Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was recorded by a seismic array in California, and they could track the path of the storm remotely using seismometers."

On 29 August 2005, as hurricane Katrina was rumbling towards New Orleans, a seismic hum more than 1000 times the strength of the average volcanic tremor was felt nearly 3000 kilometers away in southern California. Its source was the hurricane itself.

Hurricanes create large ocean waves, which send energy pulsing through the Earth as they pound the shoreline. To determine the power of Katrina's seismic waves, Peter Gerstoft of the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues analyzed the signals recorded by a network of 150 seismic stations in southern California just before Katrina hit the Louisiana coast.

In a related study set for presentation on Friday at the seismology meeting, Koper and geophysics undergraduate student YeouHui Wong found preliminary evidence that seismometers near Utah’s Great Salt Lake are picking up seismic waves generated either by waves or winds on the lake.

Sufri says the new study included Earthscope data from Oct. 18 to Nov. 3, 2012, "which coincides with the passage of Hurricane Sandy, and we tried to understand microseisms that were generated."

Sandy caused a damaging storm surge due to its size — almost 1,100 miles in diameter for tropical-storm-force winds — more than its intensity, which was 3 when it hit Cuba and 2 off the Northeast coast.

Normal ocean waves "decay with depth very quickly," says Koper. But when Sandy turned, there was a sudden increase in waves hitting waves to create "standing waves" like those created when you throw two pebbles in a pond and the ripples intersect.

Seismologists can track Sandy and other big storms because seismometers detect three components of motion: one vertical and two horizontal. If most of the energy on a seismometer is detected with a north-south motion, it means the source of the energy is north or south of the device.

"If you have enough seismometers, you can get enough data to get arrows to point at the source," Koper says.

He says the seismologists didn’t track Sandy in real time, but the seismographic data of the storm suggests it might be possible to help track storms in the future using their seismicity.

For further information see Sandy Seismic Waves.

Seismic Map image by Keith Koper, University of Utah Seismograph Stations

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