When the next major earthquake hits the Pacific Northwest, a system launched last spring should give some advance warning, as emergency alerts go out and cell phones buzz. But how well the system functions might depend on whether that quake is the so-called “really big one,” and where it starts. The Pacific Northwest’s last magnitude-9 event from the offshore subduction zone was in 1700.
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University of Washington Department of Earth and Space Sciences petrologist George Bergantz is one of two 2021 recipients of the Norman L. Bowen Award and Lecture from the American Geophysical Union, a named lectureship which the organization presents annually to one or more mid-career or senior scientists in recognition of outstanding contributions to the fields of volcanology, geochemistry and petrology. The award reflects Bergantz’s innovative scientific contributions on the physics of magmas, hydrothermal systems, metamorphism, and eruption processes.
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The UW College of the Environment was ranked #6 for geosciences in the 2021 US News & World Report Best Global Universities rankings. The program ranking came as the University of Washington climbed one spot to #7 overall on the list, maintaining its #2 ranking among U.S. public institutions. “It is gratifying to see the UW’s impact on people and communities around the world being recognized,” UW President Ana Mari Cauce said.
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On October 21, thousands of students, teachers and staff in the Stanwood Camano School District and beyond “Dropped, Covered and Held On” at exactly 10:21 a.m., emulating the synchronicity of a well-rehearsed dive team. The Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drill, held around the globe annually and supported locally by the University of Washington’s Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN), is a coordinated effort to practice what to do in the event of an actual earthquake.
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Answering the biggest questions about the Earth’s seismic activity requires two branches of seismology to connect their data in a new way: the observational community’s use of cloud computing for big data analytics and processing of measurements from earthquakes; and the modeling community’s use of High-Performance Computing (HPC) to predict, or model, the seismic waves produced by strong shaking and its impact.
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