Turkey’s slow-motion earthquake
Written by Katie Burton Published in Tectonics
Rescue workers search a collapsed building in the aftermath of an earthquake in Istanbul 16May
2019
The discovery of a slow-motion earthquake near Istanbul, which took place in 2016, raises the question of how these lesser-known events interact with more deadly natural disasters
In the summer of 2016, a large earthquake took place beneath the Sea of Marmara, a body of water enclosed by Turkey. But it was so slow that nobody without specialist monitors detected it. Occurring south of Istanbul, in the zone of the Earth known as the mid-crustal depth, the event went on for more than 50 days, emitting energy that, had it been released in one go, would have resulted in a magnitude 5.8 earthquake.
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