The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) plans to introduce six more offshore seismic monitoring stations by 2020, bringing the number of underwater stations to nine, CWB Seismology Center Director Kuo Kai-wen (郭鎧紋) said on Thursday.
The bureau has accelerated the expansion of its network for monitoring seismic activity in recent years by adding more offshore stations to better gather seismic data, Kuo said.
After determining that 70 percent of earthquakes around Taiwan originate off the northeast coast, the bureau established the nation’s first underwater seismic monitoring station off Yilan in 2011. However, its operations were suspended in 2014 after underwater power lines were damaged by a fishing trawler, he said.
While repairing the underwater lines, the bureau took the opportunity to install two additional earthquake monitoring stations in the area. Test runs started earlier this year, with the stations scheduled to come online in October, he added.
Two of the three stations are located in the Heping Sea Basin and one in the Nanao Sea Basin.
Six more underwater monitoring stations are to be added off eastern Taiwan and located in the Ryukyu Trench, a 1,398km long oceanic trench between northeastern Taiwan and southwestern Japan.
The number of stations in Taiwan is expected to reach nine by 2020, greatly improving the nation’s ability to detect tremors and tsunamis off the northeast coast, he said.
Kuo made the statement as the nation marked the 18th anniversary of the 921 Earthquake, a magnitude 7.6 quake that occurred near Nantou County’s Jiji Township (集集) in 1999 and claimed 2,456 lives.
Compared with previous years, Taiwan has seen fewer earthquakes of magnitude 4 or higher this year, which indicates poor energy release, Kuo said.
The nation typically experiences more than 100 temblors of that scale each year, but as of Thursday, there had only been 42 episodes, he said.
Ten of the 42 earthquakes measured a magnitude of at least 5, including one over 6, the center said. However, Taiwan generally sees an annual average of 33 magnitude 5 earthquakes, including three over 6.
There have been too few minor earthquakes this year, which could lead to an accumulation of energy and possibly to more powerful quakes, Kuo said.
Between the 921 Earthquake and last year, Taiwan each year saw about 150 temblors of a magnitude of 4 or higher, except for in 2007, when only 91 episodes were recorded.
However, CWB data show that the number of earthquakes in that category has been declining, with only 100 such quakes being reported in 2015 and 110 last year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching