A l'UM la science [S04-ep10]: The far field of earthquakes
This week in A l'UM la science, Philippe Vernant, researcher at Geosciences Montpelliertells us about the Kahramanmaras earthquake. The report takes you to the Restinclières estate to discover a seismometer. Finally, our last-minute guest presents the 7th edition of the Sud de Science science film festival. Sud de science. A program broadcast every Wednesday on Divergence FM 93.9.
At around 1 a.m. on February 6, 2023, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale shook the towns of Gaziantep and Kahramanmaras in Turkey's south-eastern Anatolia region. Nine hours later, at around 10 a.m., a second 7.5-magnitude tremor shook Ekinozu, less than 100 km away.
The two events only lasted a handful of minutes combined, but were so violent that nearly 60,000 people were killed, thousands injured, 2 million displaced and infrastructure devastated. On February 9, 2023, UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared the double earthquake to be one of the greatest natural disasters of our time. On February 20 and 27, two further earthquakes of magnitude 6.4 and 5.6 were recorded in the provinces of Hatay and Malatya. Hundreds of aftershocks were felt in the days and weeks that followed.
So what happened? This region has been known for its seismic activity since ancient times. In the 20th century, the Erzincan earthquake in 1939 and the Izmit earthquake in 1999 confirmed this activity, and the latest seismic hazard maps predicted the possibility of a strong earthquake in the Gaziantep region.
Turkish and French scientists examined this major event by scrutinizing the deformations of the earth's crust following the earthquake around the faults but also in much more distant regions. They came up with unexpected observations published last October in the journal Science and entitled Unexpected far-field deformation of the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes of 2023 revealed by space geodesy. We talk about it with our guest Philippe Vernant, researcher at Géoscience Montpellier and co-author of the paper.
Read more:
- The publication Unexpected far-field deformation of the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes revealed by space geodesy in Science
- CNRS article Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria: what happened?
In the second half of the program, Sandrine Baudin and Christel Tiberi, from the Géosciences Montpellier laboratory, take us to the Restinclières estate to discover a seismometer.
At the end of the show, Thomas Pichery presents the program for the Sud de sciences science festival, which starts on November 27.
At UM la science you've got the program, here we go!
Coproduction: Divergence FM / Université de Montpellier
Animation: Lucie Lecherbonnier
Interview : Lucie Lecherbonnier / Aline Périault
Reporting and editing: Lucie Lecherbonnier / Aline Périault
Production : Bruno Bertrand / Gabriel Fradin
Listen to the program "A l'UM la science" on Divergence FM 93.9
