Future Timeline

(NPR) BEIJING — A strong earthquake struck a remote part of western China overnight killing at least 118 people and injuring more than 500, the state news agency Xinhua reported Tuesday.

The tremblor hit Jishishan County, in the southwestern part of Gansu province near the border with Qinghai province — a mountainous region populated, in part, by members of the Tibetan, Hui, Dongxiang and Salar ethnic groups.

Xinhua said the earthquake had a magnitude of 6.2. Of the dead, 105 were in Gansu and another 13 in Qinghai.

The quake damaged water, electricity, transport, communications and other infrastructure in the area, it said.

(Kyodo News) About 87,000 people evacuated from damaged houses in northwestern China following a major earthquake earlier this week have been struggling to cope with freezing weather, with the death toll from the disaster topping 130, local authorities and media reports said Wednesday.

The 6.2 magnitude quake, which struck at around midnight Monday in Jishishan county of China's Gansu Province, injured some 1,000 people in the region and neighboring Qinghai, where at least a dozen residents remain missing.

To keep evacuees warm as temperatures fell below minus 10 C, local authorities in Gansu have provided shelters with some 7,000 items of heating equipment, such as coal-fired stoves. Thousands of houses have been destroyed, with infrastructure related to water, electricity and roads damaged.
A 66-year-old local resident in Jishishan said she moved to a tent with six members of her family because their home was ruined and they could not secure water. "I'm afraid of aftershocks," she said.

Zhao Dengcai, 40, who lives in a community near a shelter, said the wall of his house was cracked and that he was using a blanket to try to keep warm while sleeping amid a power outage caused by the quake. "I cannot think about what I should do now," he said.

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has expressed “sincere gratitude” to Taiwanese businesses and individuals that provided aid to earthquake-stricken areas in Gansu Province.

A spokesperson for the Office said on Thursday (Dec. 27) that more than NT$172 million (US$5.64 million) had been donated by Taiwanese businesses and individuals so far. The spokesperson said that among the Taiwanese businesses that donated were iPhone manufacturer Foxconn, media and snack group Want Want, and other groups founded by Taiwanese business people in China.

On Monday Reuters reported the death toll from the 6.2 magnitude earthquake in northwest China had risen to 149, and more than 200,000 homes had been wrecked. A spokesperson for Taiwan’s National Fire Agency told Taiwan News on Friday that rescue teams were on standby to travel to Gansu, though they were told by Chinese authorities that they currently had enough assistance from other teams.

Almost two years after a humongous eruption rocked Tonga's Hunga volcano in the southwest Pacific Ocean, scientists have finally mapped the huge magma plumbing system that gave birth to the record-breaking blast.

On Jan. 15, 2022, a volcano beneath the island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai exploded with such force it triggered the most intense lightning storm ever recorded and the first documented mega tsunami since antiquity. The eruption was felt worldwide, but the volcano's underwater setting posed a challenge for scientists trying to understand how such a violent blast occurred.

Now, in a study published Dec. 15 in the journal Science Advances, researchers have mapped slight variations in the pull of gravity in waters around the island before and after the eruption and found the explosion was likely fed by two magma chambers that merged.

"I was happily surprised that we can indeed image a relatively large magmatic system using this kind of dataset and method," said lead author Hélène Le Mével, a volcanologist and staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington D.C. This kind of work "is rarely done to study submarine volcanoes," Le Mével told Live Science in an email.

A major tsunami warning has been issued in Japan’s Ishikawa prefecture, national broadcaster NHK reported, after a series of earthquakes – one with a preliminary magnitude of 7.6 – hit the country’s west.

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning along coastal regions of Niigata and Toyama prefectures as well.

NHK TV warned torrents of water could reach as high as 5 metres and urged people to flee to high land or a top of a nearby building as quickly as possible.

The broadcaster reported that a tsunami with a height of 1.2 metres reached Wajima city in Ishikawa and another reaching 40cm was recorded at Kashizawaki city.

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A magnitude 4.1 earthquake was reported offshore in California on the morning of New Year’s day, according to the US Geological Survey.

The seismic event occurred at 8:27 am local time 11 miles from Rancho Palos Verdes, and 13 miles from Los Angeles.

An average of five earthquakes with magnitudes between 4.0 and 5.0 occur per year in the greater Los Angeles area, according to a recent three-year data sample cited by TheLos Angeles Times.

According to Michigan Technological University, tremors between 2.5 and 5.4 magnitude are often felt but rarely cause much damage. Those below 2.5 magnitude are seldom felt by most people.

Shaking was reportedly felt throughout the Southern California region on Monday, though there were no immediate reports of injuries or damages.

(Axios) State of play: Officials in Ishikawa Prefecture confirmed at least 48 deaths and 16 injuries, per multiple reports.

• The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning for Ishikawa that was later downgraded. However, it said waves up to 10 feet were still a concern for several hours after the quake struck at 4pm Monday local time (2am ET). Tsunami warnings were also issued in eastern Russia.

There were "numerous" reports of people injured and trapped, the Wajima Fire Department told AFP. The firefighters were working to put out a blaze in Wajima City, the largest city in the Okunoto region that extends into the Sea of Japan.

• Electricity is out for more than 30,000 households in Ishikawa and neighboring Niigata Prefecture, while almost 20,000 homes across four prefectures lacked running water, government spokesperson Yoshimasa Hayashi said, according to the New York Times.

• Hayashi added that over 57,300 people were evacuated from their homes to 1,000 different facilities in the affected prefectures.

• Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority reported no impact to nuclear power plants along the Sea of Japan.

(Kyodo News) Search and rescue operations continued in central Japan after it was struck by a powerful earthquake on New Year's Day, with the death toll rising above 80 and some 180 unaccounted for in Ishikawa Prefecture as of Thursday.

In Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called for an "all-out effort" to save as many lives as possible during the first 72 hours following the magnitude-7.6 quake disaster, after which the victim survival rate is said to drop sharply.

(Asahi Shimbun) A volcano has erupted on the remote island of Suwanosejima in southwestern Japan, the government said early Sunday.

No damage has been confirmed due to the eruption, public broadcaster NHK reported, citing a local police station in Kagoshima Prefecture.

The government later issued a level 3 volcanic alert--out of 5--for Suwanosejima, restricting the entrance to dangerous areas surrounding the volcano.

(Kyodo News) Tokyo - The U.S. military plans to airlift supplies from Wednesday to support Japan's relief efforts for areas in Ishikawa Prefecture damaged by a powerful earthquake on New Year's Day, Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said.

The request by Japan to its key security ally was an "exceptional" one, Kihara told a press conference on Tuesday, given that Tokyo earlier declined personnel or material support from overseas, citing arrangement difficulties.

Two U.S. Army UH-60 helicopters will engage in the mission for two days through Thursday to deliver relief supplies from the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force's Komatsu Air Base to an airport in Wajima, one of the cities on the Sea of Japan coast hardest hit by the magnitude-7.6 temblor, according to the Defense Ministry.

The ministry added that it will discuss with the U.S. side whether the choppers' relief operation needs to extended beyond Thursday.

As the Japanese Self-Defense Forces' manpower is needed for transporting evacuees from evacuation centers to hotels and other accommodation facilities outside the affected areas, Kihara said the government wants to make sure that supplies will continue to be delivered to areas in need with the help of the U.S. military "without delay."

(AFP via Science Alert) A volcanic eruption that has engulfed homes in an Icelandic fishing port confirms that a long-dormant faultline running under the country has woken up, threatening to belch out lava with little warning for years to come, an expert warned on Tuesday.

Glowing lava swallowed several homes on Sunday at the edge of the town of Grindavik, southwest of the capital Reykjavik.

The fishing town was mostly evacuated due to threat of an eruption last month and the most recent volcanic activity has since eased, authorities in the North Atlantic nation said on Monday.

The island straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a crack in the ocean floor separating the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates.

Sunday's eruption was the fifth in fewer than three years on the Reykjanes peninsula, which had not previously seen one in centuries.

New satellite imagery from NASA also shows how much heat is still leaking out of the fissures near Grindavik, a faultline that had been quiet for 800 years before this sudden spell of volcanic activity.

The map below depicts the heat emanating from the fractured land surface, detected by a thermal infrared sensor aboard NASA's Landsat 9 satellite. While the temperature scale isn't specific, it reveals the sheer size of the fissures bubbling hot with lava.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A 5.1 magnitude earthquake shook an area near Oklahoma City late Friday night, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The earthquake hit at 11:24 p.m. and was centered 8 kilometers (4.9 miles) northwest of Prague, Oklahoma, the agency said.

Prague is about 57 miles (92 kilometers) east of Oklahoma City, where residents reported feeling the shaking. Shawnee, Stillwater and Tecumseh residents also felt the earthquake, KFOR-TV reported.

The earthquake was shallow — just 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) deep, according to the USGS — and temblors that hit close to the surface can make the shaking more intense.

Iceland Girds for Feared Volcanic Eruption

Iceland volcano: Peninsula faces 'decades' of instability

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The resilient community of Grindavik has for the past weeks and months experienced the relentless forces of nature, once again proving why Iceland is often called the "Land of Fire and Ice."

Three homes in this town on the Reykjanes peninsula in southwest Iceland were destroyed this month when molten lava spewed through two fissures created by the Svartsengi volcanic system.

Once a thriving fishing village with vibrant sports teams and a youthful population, Grindavik now lies empty. Its people have fled and are beginning to face up to the realisation they may never be able live there again.

So uncertain is their future, one woman said she wished her home had been swallowed up by lava.

Overhead photo of blackened lava after recently erupted volcano burns down three houses in the town on January 15, 2024

Over the past three years, the peninsula - approximately the size of the West Midlands in the UK - has witnessed five volcanic eruptions.