{"id":649425,"date":"2025-12-23T01:41:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T01:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/649425\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T01:41:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T01:41:23","slug":"heriot-watt-researchers-confirm-causes-of-2011-japan-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/649425\/","title":{"rendered":"Heriot-Watt researchers confirm causes of 2011 Japan disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

RESEARCHERS from Heriot-Watt University have confirmed the key causes behind the devastation caused by the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The study, part of an international research team, \u201cprovides the clearest evidence yet that a thin, clay-rich layer just beneath the seabed at the Japan Trench played a central role in allowing the magnitude 9.0 earthquake to rupture all the way to the surface\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is now understood that the shallow slip of the clay layer displaced vast areas of the seafloor, generating the tsunami that caused over 20,000 casualties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Taking place on 11 March 2011, the earthquake struck off the coast near the city of Sendai in the country\u2019s\u00a0T?hoku\u00a0region.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The resulting tsunami swept through the coastline, destroying homes, vehicles, and infrastructure in its wake.<\/p>\n

\"wave<\/a>The earthquake caused smaller shocks around the world.<\/p>\n

The tsunami also resulted in the explosion of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over 19,000 people were killed<\/a>, while over 2,500\u00a0remain\u00a0missing to this day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Patrick Fulton, co-author of the study and based at Cornell University in the USA, said: \u201cThis work helps explain why the 2011 earthquake behaved so differently from what many of our models predicted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBy seeing exactly how the fault zone is constructed, we can better understand where slip is likely to concentrate and how much tsunami potential a given subduction zone might have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The results are based on data collected during International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 405, known as JTRACK, which in 2024 drilled directly through the plate boundary fault.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reaching almost eight kilometres beneath the sea surface, the expedition is the deepest scientific ocean drilling ever completed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amy Gough, a sedimentologist from Heriot-Watt<\/a>\u2018s School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society,\u00a0participated\u00a0in the expedition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cFrom a sedimentological perspective, this is a unique recipe for localising deformation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fault is not spread out over tens or hundreds of metres. It is concentrated into a very thin zone that makes it much easier for large earthquakes to keep going all the way to the seabed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr Uisdean Nicholson, also a sedimentary geologist in Heriot-Watt said: \u201cWe knew from earlier studies that there was weak clay near the fault zone, but\u00a0previous\u00a0drilling records were patchy, with limited core recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe exceptional results from this expedition, with complete cores and geophysical data from multiple drilling sites, let us see exactly what the relationship is between that material and the fault.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we find is an exceptionally weak layer that\u00a0contains\u00a0direct evidence of extreme shearing at the main plate boundary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe clay, which has\u00a0very little\u00a0frictional resistance, allows the rupture to propagate all the way to the seabed rather than the energy dissipating below the surface.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat led to this enormous amount of movement of the seabed, which pushed the water up in turn, resulting in this devastating tsunami.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The new findings confirm that it is \u201cprecisely the weakness of this thin clay layer\u201d that enables such extreme motion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The findings will not help in predicting future earthquakes, but the researchers say they\u00a0represent\u00a0an important step\u00a0towards more realistic models of how megathrust faults behave.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fulton\u00a0added: \u201cUltimately, our goal is to translate this kind of detailed fault zone knowledge into better assessments of earthquake and tsunami hazards for coastal communities around the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RESEARCHERS from Heriot-Watt University have confirmed the key causes behind the devastation caused by the 2011 Japan earthquake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,762,2122,111985,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-649425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-heriot-watt-university","12":"tag-japan","13":"tag-japan-earthquake","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115766341334629813","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}