Ja, South Africa! You won't believe this one. Remember that weird shaking the Earth did back in 2023? Turns out, it wasn't aliens, but a massive tsunami in Greenland! Scientists have finally figured out what caused those strange seismic signals that repeated every 90 seconds for nine whole days. It was like the planet had a bad case of the hiccups!
What happened in Dickson Fjord?
So, here's the story. According to the okes at the University of Oxford and other clever boffins, two giant landslides plunged into the Dickson Fjord in East Greenland. These landslides were triggered by a melting glacier (climate change, eish!). The splashes from these landslides created massive tsunamis, or mega-tsunamis as they're calling them. Because the fjord is, well, a fjord, these tsunamis couldn't escape and just sloshed back and forth for days. This back-and-forth sloshing is called a seiche, a standing wave that can be pretty hectic.
How big were these waves?
These weren't just any little ripples, mind you. The scientists reckon these waves reached heights of 7.4 to 8.8 meters! That's like a two-story building crashing down on you. Lucky for everyone, the area is super remote, so nobody was around to witness the chaos firsthand. But the shaking was felt across the globe!
Satellite Data to the the Rescue
What makes this story even cooler is how they figured it out. They used satellite data from NASA's Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite. This satellite maps the height of water across most of the Earth, which is pretty kak amazing. This allowed scientists to actually see the seiches happening and confirm that they were the cause of the seismic signals. It's a real victory for science and shows how new tech can solve old mysteries. Now that's something to cheers to with a Castle Lite!
- Melting glacier caused landslides.
- Landslides triggered mega-tsunamis in Dickson Fjord.
- Tsunamis created seiches (standing waves).
- Seiches caused global seismic signals.
- Satellite data confirmed the cause.