Earthquake Possibilities

On September 12, I experience the first earthquake of my life. I was sitting at my desk at the time when I felt our apartment shaking for about 10 seconds. I did not know what it was at first. Only when I went out to the living room, did I learned through my parents that we just had an earthquake. The epicenter was in a city called Gyeongju located about 250km south of Seoul. The 5.8 magnitude earthquake was felt throughout most of the country and was followed by some 400 aftershocks with some being a magnitude of 3.8. The Gyeongju earthquake is considered to be most powerful earthquake to hit the peninsular since Korea began recording earthquakes in 1978. While the earthquake did not cause any major damage, it did leave us realizing how little we were prepared for such natural disaster.

Earthquake has never been part of our lives as I grew-up in Korea. We saw only through TV news coverage the devastations of earthquakes especially in our neighboring country Japan. And as we watched the news, I think most in Korea felt that it would never happen to us in Korea. The tremor on September 12 changed everyone’s minds. I think all Koreans now realize that Korea is not exempted from possible disaster. 

Now that I have lived through my first earthquake, like so many people, I started to think about what we need to do before the next one hits. Clearly there has to be a better education and training in place to show and teach everyone what they must do to prepare for an earthquake. I also wonder why we had an earthquake in Korea and also why it seems there were so many other earthquakes around the world. In 2016, there have been 8546 earthquakes around the world with magnitude of 4 or above. While it’s commonly known that earthquakes are usually caused when rock underground suddenly breaks along a fault and this  sudden release of energy causes the seismic waves that make the ground shake, what is not commonly known is the possibility of climate change triggering natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. 

Professor Bill McGuire of University College of London published a book in 2012 discussing exact possibility. An article in CarbonBrief Clear on Climate, stated that “McGuire book examines what the planet has done in the past as the climate has changed naturally, and makes a convincing case for a historical relationship between natural change and some geological activity. Give the speedy nature of the current climate change, it seems reasonable to take form this that our current human-driven climate change will have geological consequences. McGuire suggests that if man-made climate change leads to more large ice sheets disappearing – like the one covering Greenland – this could lead to more shakes, rattles and rolls."

While there are skeptics calling McGuire’s theory as a science fiction, what is not science fiction is man made climate change is melting the ice and the world is witnessing greater number of earthquakes than before. 

By Daniel Kim