Landslide caused a 200-meter tsunami that rocked the Earth for 9 days: scientists across the planet heard it

In September 2023, scientists discovered a mysterious seismic signal that lasted nine days. An international team of experts spent a year studying the mysterious phenomena and finally published the conclusions of the study.

It turned out that in East Greenland, the top of a mountain collapsed into the sea and caused a megatsunami about 200 meters high. The giant wave rocked back and forth in a narrow fjord for nine days, creating seismic waves that reverberated through the Earth's crust, baffling scientists around the world, EurekAlert writes.

"When we set out on this scientific adventure, everyone was baffled, and no one had even the slightest idea what caused this signal. We only knew that it had something to do with the displacement. We were only able to solve this mystery thanks to a huge interdisciplinary and international effort," said the study's lead author, Christian Svennevig, a geologist from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS).

Scientists say climate change set the stage for the landslide, as a glacier melted at the foot of the mountain. That destabilized more than 25 million cubic meters of rock and ice - enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools - that eventually crashed into the sea.

Scientists warn as Earth's polar regions continue to melt due to climate change, it could lead to an increase in destructive landslides like this one.

When seismic monitoring networks first detected the signal in September 2023, it was surprising for two main reasons. First, the signal was quite different from the fussy wave that earthquakes produce on seismographs. Second, the signal remained strong for several days in a row, while more common seismic events weaken more quickly.

The global community of scientists began to actively discuss online what might have caused the strange seismic waves. The discussion included reports of a huge shift in a remote Greenland fjord that occurred on Sept. 16, around the time the seismic signal was first detected.

To find out if and how the two phenomena might be related, scientists combined seismic records from around the world, field measurements, satellite images and computer modeling to reconstruct the extraordinary events.

An expert team of 68 scientists from 41 research institutions, led by Christian Svennevig of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, analyzed satellite and ground images to document the sheer volume of rock and ice during the landslide. They also analyzed seismic waves to model the dynamics and trajectory of the rock and ice avalanche as it moved down the glacial gorge toward the fjord.

To understand the tsunami, researchers used supercomputers to create high-resolution simulations of the events.

The results of the study show the complex, cascading hazards associated with climate change in polar regions. Although there were no people in the area during the landslide and megatsunami, the waves destroyed infrastructure at an empty research station on Ella Island at a cost of about $200,000. And this fjord is also close to a route commonly used by cruise ships.

So experts emphasize that this indicates the need to monitor the polar regions as climate change accelerates.

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