The Central Weather Administration (CWA) is building an undersea cable earthquake detection system, with a heavy emphasis on monitoring geological activity within and near the Mariana Trench, CWA Seismological Center director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) said in an interview published on Friday by the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times).
With Taiwan on the boundary between the Philippines and Eurasia tectonic plates, it is on an earthquake belt, so it is vital to establish earthquake detection stations, Wu said.
The stations must be in accessible locations that are close to signal network hubs and power stations to facilitate easy maintenance, but they should also be close to seismic centers to more easily pinpoint where earthquakes occur and provide more accurate information on their magnitudes, he said.
Photo: Chen Chia-jui, Taipei Times
If they are too far away, it delays detection and alerts, he added.
The uneven spread of Taiwan’s earthquake detection stations contributes to occasional errors made by advanced warning systems, Wu said, citing as examples a magnitude 4.5 earthquake in Chiayi County on Wednesday that triggered a warnings in Taitung County, despite it only being a magnitude 1 quake.
The CWA in 2020 completed nine detection stations and a 735km undersea cable monitoring system along the east coast from Yilan County to Pingtung County’s Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, Wu said, adding that it is looking to construct additional stations and extend the monitoring system to the south of Taiwan.
Research shows that the cycle of magnitude 8 earthquakes south is about 100 years, the cycle for magnitude 8.5 is about 250 years and for magnitude 9 it is about 1,000 years, he said.
The extension of the monitoring system southward from Taiwan is to monitor the geological activity of the Mariana Trench, which has not had a large earthquake in the past six decades, except for a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in 1996, Wu said.
We might be in a downcycle, but we cannot rule out the possibility that if a large-scale earthquake occurs in the Mariana Trench in about 40 years, Kaohsiung might be rocked by a magnitude 4 earthquake and face a 5m tsunami, he said.
The CWA would continue to develop advanced warning technology, he said, adding that it is applying the regional model for advanced warnings, which requires data from three or four stations to pinpoint a quake’s location and calculate its magnitude.
The on-site model currently favored by academics only needs the data from one or two stations, but they have a larger margin of error, Wu said, adding that the CWA is still trialing how to merge the two models.
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