Are you feeling that... is it an earthquake?
Earthquakes are frequenting news cycles in India more than ever. Here is why
Hey folks,
Here’s a little something about me: As someone who’s perpetually sleep-deprived, the feeling of standing on wobbly ground was never unusual for me. The shakiness could always be attributed to my body protesting against staying up unjustifiably late at night, and as long as I knew why I felt thrown off balance, it never disconcerted me.
But that has changed now – my sleeplessness has been replaced with paranoia. Now, every time I feel wobbly, I immediately call out to my mother, yelling, “are you feeling that? Is it another earthquake?”
Earthquakes are frequenting news cycles in India more than ever. In a period of the past 30 days, the National Capital Region (NCR) and its neighbouring areas have experienced at least three earthquakes.
On October 3, strong tremors were felt across Delhi after four earthquakes hit Nepal within an hour. Then on October 16, a 4.8-magnitude earthquake hit Nepal’s Sudurpaschim province. A couple of days later, strong tremors once again rocked Delhi-NCR and neighbouring states after a 6.4-magnitude quake ravaged western Nepal on November 3.
🤔 But why is this happening? One reason is the proximity to the Himalayas. This region, which falls under the Seismic Zone IV and V, is a tectonically active region. The relatively young mountains are products of the Indian tectonic plate diving under the Eurasian plate. As these plates continue their slow dance, the Himalayan region is naturally earthquake-prone.
But even besides prolonged tectonic stress, studies indicate that the frequency of earthquakes has shown a sharp upswing after the 2000s.
Data from 1960-70 shows about 100 earthquakes per year in the Himalayan region, but after 2000, the frequency has gone up to 500-600 earthquakes of varying intensity, reports EastMojo.
🌏 What is making the problem worse? No points for guessing — climate change. With the Himalayas warming faster than the global average, glaciers are losing mass rapidly, triggering a domino effect. The Earth's crust, relieved of the weight of these glaciers, adjusts through a process called isostasy, triggering more earthquakes.
A report by The Hindu notes:
“There is an emerging consensus among scientists that global warming can generate tipping points that may trigger an already unstable, deep geological fault line into releasing pent-up sub-surface strain as an earthquake.”
📝 But wait, there’s also more: We're not just bystanders in this story. The construction of numerous hydropower dams across the Himalayas is contributing to what is known as reservoir-induced seismicity (RIS).
A report by The Third Pole expounds on this phenomenon: “RIS refers to the pressure created by water in a large reservoir on or near a fault line leading to slippage of the Earth’s crust underneath, causing an earthquake.”
As per Ayaz Mahmood Dar, an integrated researcher of earth sciences and director of Tehkeek International, a research institute based in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, “The Chenab valley [in Jammu] is a case study of reservoir-induced seismicity."
The irony: Hydropower is often considered green energy because it generates electricity from the natural flow of water without releasing any emissions or pollutants. It also does not rely on fossil fuels.
💡 So what do we do? In an ecosystem as fragile as the Himalayas, the development of hydropower projects has long been controversial. And so, alternatives have sprung up. Microhydro is a small-scale hydroelectric power generation system that uses the energy of falling water to turn a turbine and can typically generate up to 100 kilowatts (kW) of electricity.
To read more about these systems, you can take a look at this column in the Indian Express.
📼FYI, since we’re on the topic, here are some basic do’s and don’ts during a quake.
That's all for today. We'll be back next Thursday with more.
Until then, stay tuned!
Ayesha
You can reach out to me with feedback, comments or suggestions at ayesha.jain@indianexpress.com or get in touch @ayeshajn97.