The Taiwan earthquake is a test for China and the global tsunami warning system, and the effect is not bad.
▲When the strong earthquake occurred, an apartment house on Beibin Street in Hualien County, Taiwan was tilted significantly. Photo/Xinhua News Agency
Text | ZHANG Tiankan
At 7:58 a.m. on April 3, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake occurred in the sea area of Hualien County, Taiwan, and the tremors were felt throughout Taiwan.
The earthquake is the first earthquake of magnitude 7 or higher in 17 years since the 7.2 magnitude earthquake off the Pingtung Sea in Taiwan in 2006, and it is also the largest earthquake in Taiwan 25 years after the "9.21" earthquake in 1999. Since 1970, there have been 19 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher within 300 kilometers of the epicenter.
Taiwan is an island, and an earthquake can trigger a tsunami to a large extent. Therefore, the earthquake in Taiwan is an important opportunity to test tsunami warning or forecasting and disaster prevention.
Tsunami warning is not a "wolf"
After the earthquake, the Tsunami Warning Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources of China issued a timely warning based on preliminary seismic parameters and numerical models, and a tsunami was expected to occur in the waters off Taiwan. Since a global tsunami warning system has been established, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning for the southern islands three minutes after the earthquake, and a series of flight cancellations and delays were triggered.
In fact, whether it is China or Japan, this tsunami warning is timely and relatively accurate. About 17 minutes after the tsunami warning was issued in Japan, a tsunami of up to 30 centimeters was observed on Yonaguni Island in Okinawa.
After observing that the tsunami would not cause more damage, the tsunami warning in Japan was lifted around noon on April 3. China also lowered the tsunami warning from red to orange on the afternoon of April 3 after an increase in seismic parameters and the compilation and analysis of data from sea level observations.
Of course, the tsunami warning this time is not to shout "wolves are coming", but the "wolves" that are coming are smaller and have not caused great harm to people. Moreover, even if the "wolves" do not come, in the event of an earthquake in coastal areas, oceans, and islands, tsunami warnings and forecasts will continue, which is responsible for human lives and an important measure to reduce disasters.
The disasters caused by countless tsunamis in the past have taught people hard how to prevent tsunamis when earthquakes occur. One of the most traumatic was the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake of 26 December 2004 and the resulting tsunami.
In the absence of a tsunami warning and the fact that it was a Christmas holiday, some countries and regions suffered heavy casualties. As a result of this disaster, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System, the Northeast Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea and the Associated Seas Tsunami Warning System, and the Caribbean Tsunami Warning System have been established around the world.
What is China's tsunami warning doing?
In view of China's large sea area and long coastline, in 2013, China established the Tsunami Warning Center, also known as the South China Sea Regional Tsunami Warning Center, on the basis of the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center, which is responsible for providing tsunami monitoring and early warning services for China, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries.
In May 2023, after two years of trial operation, the global storm surge and tsunami monitoring and early warning system independently developed by the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center (China Tsunami Warning Center) was officially put into operation. This system supports GPU parallel acceleration technology, which saves 90% of power consumption compared with traditional supercomputer computing methods, and has intelligence and high integration, which can realize automatic operation and one-click release.
At present, the system has been connected to hundreds of seismic stations and hundreds of ocean observation stations around the world, and can obtain tsunami buoy data in time, and can observe and warn in real time 24 hours a day.
Although there was no tsunami in Taiwan's waters, there was a tsunami in Japan, which is adjacent to China, indicating that this system is compatible with the global tsunami warning system, and the early warning is also effective, and it will play an important role in the future.
On the other hand, storm surge (storm surge is an anomalous rise in sea level caused by strong atmospheric disturbances, as opposed to the cause of tsunamis) and tsunami disasters are the world's major marine hazards, and the coasts of the Northwest Pacific, Atlantic, North Indian and Oceania have all been hit by severe storm surge disasters.
China's tsunami warning system has a grid resolution of about 3 kilometers in the global nearshore area, and the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center has also independently developed a global storm surge monitoring system, which can obtain real-time tide level observation information from more than 300 stations in 65 coastal countries around the world, realizing real-time monitoring of global storm surge.
Practical tests show that China's global storm surge monitoring and early warning system has issued forecasts for multiple storm surge processes such as "Anpan" in 2020 and "Nanmadu" in 2022, such as the "Anpan" storm surge forecast, and the National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center predicts that the maximum storm surge will reach 500 cm 48 hours in advance. According to the report of the Indian Meteorological Department, the maximum storm surge of "Amphan" is 4.6 meters, and the forecast is in good agreement with the actual measurement.
Thanks to the global tsunami warning system, which China has joined, China can generally respond within 8 to 12 minutes to warn of a tsunami and forecast storm surge in the event of a major undersea earthquake in any part of the world. The Taiwan earthquake is a test for China and the global tsunami warning system, and the effect is not bad.
In the future, the global tsunami early warning system will be further improved and expanded, and its functions will be stronger and better, and it will play a more important role in protecting human life and reducing the degree of disasters.
Written by Zhang Tiankan (Columnist)
Editor / Chi Daohua
Proofreading / Zhang Yanjun
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