What are the chances of a devastating tsunami hitting the Mediterranean coast?
The series of earthquakes and aftershocks that hit Turkey and Syria recently raised fear about the possibility of a devastating tsunami in the Mediterranean, especially with news of the decline of sea water in several countries.
The Mediterranean Sea is one of the geologically active regions as a result of the collision of the African, European, and West Asian continents. This collision, which lasted 65 million years, led to the formation of the Alps, and contributed to reducing the area of the Mediterranean.
And the African continent moves by 2.5 cm per year under the European plate, which causes frequent earthquakes and volcanic activities.
Although the subsurface geological structure of the Mediterranean Sea has been extensively studied, the few regional data available so far do not allow us to define the boundaries between the two plates, and to understand the tectonic activity around them.
In this context, the Egyptian Dr. Elham Mahmoud, an expert in environment and marine sciences at the United Nations and a professor at the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences in Egypt, said in an interview with "France 24" that it is important to know that the Mediterranean Sea is not the size of the oceans that can accommodate it. There are successive waves called tsunamis.
The tectonic movement is known in the Mediterranean region, specifically in the countries of the Levant and Turkey, and it can be described as a displacement. As we know, earthquakes originate in the occurrence of some horizontal or vertical displacements in the earth's crust.
The expert explained that this is done in areas where there are faults. For the occurrence of a tsunami, the displacement between the faults is assumed to be a vertical displacement.
And it must be a severe and clear displacement, but this displacement when it is horizontal does not cause a tsunami, and this type of displacement is known in the Mediterranean region.
The expert pointed out that the people of the Mediterranean region are fortunate that the displacement that occurs in it is of the horizontal type, not vertical, and therefore does not result in a tsunami, and this cannot even happen in the future in the Mediterranean region, including the Maghreb region, and with it Egypt.
Noting that when talking about the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the scientists who analyzed the phenomenon found that the issue of energy discharge or displacement, all or most of it was done horizontally, means horizontal displacement.
And they said that from 80 to 85 percent of the energy discharges took place in this way. On the other hand, a small percentage, ranging from 15 to 20 percent, took place vertically.
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