Earth Tremors in Kent

[kaz]

hi just to add that the epecenter for that one was way out off Hartland Point here in north devon and was felt as far as bristol... i was on a night shift when things on the desk started moving we all looked at each other and then felt the floor vibrating we thought it must have been a huge lorry going past or maybe a low flying jet doing night manovers.. It wasnt untill the day staff came in that we found out what it was..

kaz

[The PIT]

I'm curious how come they're not using the richter scale????

Also looking at the scale 4.2 doesn't seem to tally up with the description of the damages reported.

[Paranoid]

I think the tremor was shallow, around 6km. For example the 4.2 one in Warwick was 13km underground. (i lived very near the epicentre but slept right through it.)

[Azores Hi]

Absolutely gutted, didn't feel a thing. On the subject of people ringing the police. alot of people thought that Dungeoness power station had thrown a wobbly or someone had blown up the channel tunnel.

[mackerel sky]

I work with the BGS in Edinburgh using the digital catalogue of data from the past 25 years to image the crust and upper mantle using seismic tomography which borrows its techniques from medical tomography, but to image the crust beneath the UK rather than internal organs. The region of the Dover Straits and the southern North Sea is a difficult one because of the long recurrance intervals between earthquakes, so much so historical evidence of damage is incorporated when trying to assess the magnitude of events before instrumental evidence was available. I was in Malta of the morning of the Folkestone earthquake and couldn't believe the rubbish doled out by Sky News, before some semblance was restored when some of the staff from the BGS got in and made an preliminary assessment of the location and magnitude, talking about it simple and plain terms. With any significant recent seismic event in the U.K. this tends to lend itself to a more detailed study, which is ongoing.

For what its worth, we have little constraints on velocity models for location in that area. Mostly due to the infrequency of events. I was requested and have provided them with a potentially better velocity model to constrain the location from ongoing research. From the seismic tomography in the regions where we have more events, it is now getting to a stage where we can better understand the distribution of earthquakes in U.K. The pattern as observed from the surface is neither random nor uniform, as it doesn't necessarily equate with the major structural features as thought of from the subdivision of terrane boundaries. What we are seeing, from 3-D visualisation of the tomographic model which extends into the upper mantle are features which when mapped in 3-D show earthquakes clustered around their edges, for example in the Irish Sea and the emplacement of ponded magmatic material at the base of the crust from the last major volcanic event in the U.K. 60 million years ago.

With any luck you'll be hearing alot more about this in the next 6 months or so. It is significant in terms of our current understanding of intraplate earthquakes (earthquakes well away from plate margins) and the general seismic hazard of the U.K.

Edited May 20, 2007 by mackerel sky

[Soaring Hawk]

Thanks for this MS. I shall await any further info with interest.

[mackerel sky]

Thanks for this MS. I shall await any further info with interest.

In the past week i've been attending some courses on how to deal with the media, if it might come to that. I have a presentation at a general PG research event in a about a months time and Central News/BBC East Mids Today will be probably be attending it as they have in the past, so if it may catch attention - then the ball is set in motion for further press coverage. Publication via peer reviewed journals is the natural end to it, but the media likes their quick fix. Its a good time whilst the Folkestone earthquake is fresh in people's minds.

If I do get on the news then I either sit infront of a random computer (not mine) or take a book off a shelf. And expect to be called a "boffin".

Edited May 21, 2007 by mackerel sky

[The PIT]

In the past week i've been attending some courses on how to deal with the media, if it might come to that. I have a presentation at a general PG research event in a about a months time and Central News/BBC East Mids Today will be probably be attending it as they have in the past, so if it may catch attention - then the ball is set in motion for further press coverage. Publication via peer reviewed journals is the natural end to it, but the media likes their quick fix. Its a good time whilst the Folkestone earthquake is fresh in people's minds.

If I do get on the news then I either sit infront of a random computer (not mine) or take a book off a shelf. And expect to be called a "boffin".

Dealing with the media that shoud be fun.

Tell them theres a new volcano forming and it's going to form at No.10. That should get them talking.