EarthScope Consortium

Graphic with a red-to-purple gradient overlay showing a hand signing a printed document. Large white text reads ‘We’re Hiring!’ and a URL at the bottom reads ‘earthscope.org/careers’.

We’re hiring! EarthScope is looking for a Contracts Administrator II (remote, US) to coordinate contract and award administration across the organization.

Learn more & apply: https://earthscope.org/careers

Map showing modeled tsunami wave heights across the Pacific Ocean following a magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on July 29, 2025. Wave energy radiates outward from the source toward Japan, Hawaii, the U.S. West Coast, and other Pacific regions. A quote from Diego Melgar emphasizes the danger of even small tsunami wave heights

Recent Earthquake Teachable Moment for the magnitude 8.8 earthquake near Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Russia

Teachable Moments presentations capture the opportunity to bring knowledge, insight, and critical thinking to the classroom following a newsworthy earthquake.

➡️ https://loom.ly/6Eo_fYc

landscape photo of the workers scatter around on rocks, and a man in yellow working on a large instrument on the right. The foreground consists of brown and gray gravel and rocks, with people scattered among them. the right side of the picture has a large metal gray box, and an instrument sitting on a tripod. A man in yellow in crouching down near the base of the instrument working on it. the background consists of rolling blue mountains, with a bright blue sky above and a cloud in the right side of the sky.

group of field workers stand together smiling with helicopter behind them. It sits on gravel and rock with bushy green trees filling the background and a small amount of clear blue sky peaking through the top.

landscape photo of instrument and mount St Helen. On the left a large metal box with antenna and a solar panel sits, with a person in yellow working on an instrument to the right and a bit further back. To the right of that sits the volcano and its surrounding landscape. There is a bright blue sky above, with a few scattered clouds along the horizon and on the left side.

workers installing a platform for instruments on a brown and gray rocky surface. 3 wooden beams making 3 sides of a square are laying on the ground, with one worker placing rocks beneath a beam and the other digging a hole in the ground in the middle. to the left of them sits a large solar panel, and in the back left of the image sits an instrument on a tripod. in the background are rolling blue mountains, with large clouds filling most of the sky.

Mount St. Helens doesn’t take winters lightly, so our team took winter prep to new heights, flying in by helicopter to service our instruments.
One station is on Google Maps, so if you’re hiking by check us out and leave a 5-star review 🤓
📍EarthScope Observatory Station, Cougar WA
#fieldworkfriday

intern stands in center of frame facing the camera and smiling. behind her is green foliage.

group of 4 interns working in a desert field covered or short shrubs with mountains off in the distance. intern on the left is is holding cables, while one in the middle holds a computer open and the other holds a clipboard while writing on it. The intern on the right is seated in a short stool with a metal box of equipment at their feet.

Meet Rebecca, one of the RESESS summer interns! She is working on how machine learning can be applied to study the interior of magma chambers. Learn more about the work Rebecca does in her interview: https://loom.ly/fzW32cQ

On Tuesday, an 8.8 magnitude #earthquake struck off the coast of Russia, triggering multiple #tsunami alerts along the U.S. west coast. Learn how NOAA scientists monitor, detect, and research tsunamis: noaa.gov/explainers/science-behind-tsunamis

Crescent city river gauge record

Just to illustrate how long waves from a #tsunami can keep going, this is a tide gauge record from Crescent City CA (known for its sensitivity to tsunami waves due to bathymetric and resonance effects) showing significant wave activity still continues 24+ hours after their first arrival. 🧪⚒️

Map of seismicity with pink circles aftershocks of the M8.8 and the purple circles after shocks of the M7.4 foreshock

Aftershocks from the M8.8 Kamchatka #earthquake will likely continue for years. This sequence now also includes tensional events in the outer rise area, where the subducting slab bends to dive into the mantle. 🧪⚒️

A look at the July 29th magnitude 8.8 subduction zone earthquake near Kamchatka and the tsunami it triggered.

Modelling results for the #Kamchatka tsunami from July 30, 2025. Pacific ocean in dark blue, red and yellow colors show the wave heights. In grey, the land masses of Eurasia (upper left), Australia (lower left) and the Americas (right).

Fresh from the press, so to speak, a result of our #tsunami model based on the specifics of this earthquake (we will update it one we have more model runs). The color code is wave height in metres. The dotted line in the centre of the picture is the Hawaiian island chain.

A tall rectangular plot showing 115 horizontal wiggle traces stacked vertically, each trace normalized and offset so that the closest station is at the top. The x‑axis runs from 0 to 3500 s (“Time since event origin (s)“), and the y‑axis labels every fifth station with its network code and epicentral distance in degrees (e.g. “ABCD (12.3°)“). Each trace is colored according to its distance from the epicenter using a jet colormap (cool blue for nearby, warm red for distant). A vertical colorbar at right indicates epicentral distance from 0° to ~180°. The title reads “Kamchatka Earthquake Recorded on Subsampled GSN Stations (Aligned to Origin Time).”

A wide rectangular globe view in Plate Carrée projection, recentered so longitude 160° E is in the middle. The map displays a shaded‑relief background of Earth’s landmasses and oceans. Thin gray coastlines and dotted political borders overlay the relief. Black‑edged circles mark 230 seismic stations, colored by epicentral distance using the MATLAB‑style “jet” rainbow colormap (blue through yellow to red). A large red star at 54° N, 160° E marks the earthquake epicenter. A vertical colorbar at right labels “Epicentral Distance (°)” from minimum to maximum. The title reads “Global Seismic Network Stations & Event Location (Centered on Epicenter with Topography).”

From earthquake epicenter to Antarctica, Global Seismic Network stations picked up the Mw 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake.
At the link, click the Technical tab on the right, then SAGE data access on the bottom, and you can see the GSN and download these waveforms for yourself!
https://loom.ly/6Eo_fYc

NEW: You may wonder why Japan’s 2011 mag-9.1 quake created a colossal tsunami that killed 18,000 people, while today’s mag-8.8 quake made a big, but not catastrophic, tsunami.

For @sciam.bsky.social, I explore why. (Hint: it’s because the 2011 quake was SO much stronger.)

More fascinating ways the M8.8 Kamchatka earthquake has been recorded! Did you know that even earthquakes thousands of miles away can cause changes in groundwater levels?

www.usgs.gov/mission-area...

Temblor map of the M 8.8 Kamchatka Peninsula earthquake. The peninsula and other land is color coded according to shaking expected in your lifetime, per Temblor's PUSH model. The mainshock is marked by a bright blue star. Smaller quakes are marked by circles that scale with magnitude and are color coded by age in days. Credit: Temblor

Around 11:30 am local time, a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck the offshore Kamchatka region at a depth of about 20 kilometers. The subduction zone quake caused severe shaking on the Kamchatka peninsula and triggered tsunami warnings and advisories around the Pacific. (1/n)

Watch how seismometers recorded the passing earthquake waves from the magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

Each dot in this animation is a seismic station—red 🔴 means the ground moved up, blue 🔵 means it moved down.

More ➡️ https://loom.ly/6Eo_fYc

NISAR Launch Join NASA and ISRO (the Indian Space Research Organisation) for the launch of our most advanced Earth-observing radar satellite, which will provide 3D views ...

🚀🛰️ Live coverage of the #NISAR launch is underway!

Tuning in to NASA's live stream? Share your reactions here with us! What scientific questions are you hoping to explore with NISAR data?

https://loom.ly/X2PPHcs

M8.8 earthquake strikes offshore Kamchatka A dangerous subduction megathrust ruptures once again

⚒️ 🧪

A M8.8 earthquake just ruptured the subduction zone offshore Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula. This is one of the world’s truly huge earthquakes, and a triggered tsunami is currently traveling across the Pacific ocean.

This same fault ruptured on July 20th in a M7.4, and last August in a M7.1.

Seismogram and map from Station Monitor showing vertical ground motion from the July 29, 2025 magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Kamchatka. The seismogram was recorded at station R32K in Eaglecrest, Alaska, and marks the arrival of P waves, S waves, and surface waves. A yellow highlight shows the surface wave portion of the signal. The map below shows the path between the event epicenter off Kamchatka (marked “E”) and the station in Alaska (marked “S”), spanning 4003 km.

The magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula is tied for the 6th largest ever recorded by modern instruments.

Check out how the ground moved near you using our Station Monitor app
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https://loom.ly/LvUPs2g

🧪⚒️ Notice how newer updates about the Kamchatka quake say M8.8, though it was M8.7 earlier?
That doesn't mean something changed about the quake - it just means people were able to consider more data in the magnitude calculation.
This kind of revision happens a lot, especially for bigger quakes.

U.S. Tsunami Warning Centers

TSUNAMI WARNING 3: See tsunami.gov for alert areas. M8.7 080mi SE Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka 1625PDT Jul 29

Subduction zone earthquakes don’t just shake the ground, they also displace the seafloor, which can trigger tsunamis that travel vast distances across the ocean. Earthquakes like this highlight the importance of global seismic and tsunami monitoring systems.

At the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench, the Pacific Plate subducts beneath the Okhotsk Plate, producing frequent moderate to large earthquakes—like the recent magnitude 7.4 event on July 20.

Map showing the tectonic setting of the Kamchatka Peninsula region. The Pacific Plate subducts beneath the Okhotsk Plate at the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench. A red star marks the epicenter of the July 29 magnitude 8.7 earthquake offshore, with a nearby white star indicating the earlier July 20 magnitude 7.4 earthquake. Colored dots along the plate boundaries represent historical earthquakes, with different colors denoting earthquake depth. Plate boundaries and labels for the Pacific, Okhotsk, and North American Plates are also shown.

How often do magnitude 8+ earthquakes occur? Not very often. While the last one occurred in 2021, on average, Earth experiences about one M8 earthquake per year.

Today’s M8.7 earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula is a powerful example of a megathrust earthquake along a subduction zone.

A magnitude 8.7 earthquake has just occurred off Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, just a bit over a week after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake in the same area.

Multiple tsunami warnings and advisories are in place. Please check www.tsunami.gov for the latest information.

intern stands in middle of photo smiling in an orange plaid shirt with a backpack on. thick green foliage surrounds the background, with a hazy gray sky above.

interns stands facing the right side of the screen, leaning against a pile of rocks while holding a notebook in left and writing with a pen in right. a rocky pile sits in the lower left corner of the frame, with a dead log sticking out from the lower right corner and scattered trees an a hill throughout the background.

Meet James, one of the RESESS summer interns! He is studying the magma storage conditions of prior eruptions at an understudied and potentially active distributed volcano. Learn more about the work James does in his interview: https://loom.ly/OkVmOS8

A silver, triangular corner reflector stands in a grassy field beneath a stylized satellite in orbit. A green radar beam connects the satellite to the reflector, illustrating signal reflection. Rolling hills and mountains appear in the background.

🛰️ The #NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission is set to launch tomorrow!

Ahead of liftoff, we’re spotlighting how EarthScope-supported corner reflectors will help calibrate satellite radar data from NISAR and other satellite missions.

Watch here 📽️ https://loom.ly/KCy6Ffc

The Science Behind the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman Earthquake & Tsunami Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Why was this earthquake a surprise to the scientific community? Learn more in our video on the science behind the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake & tsunami
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loom.ly/nvoYSSA

On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 earthquake ruptured the Sunda subduction zone north of Sumatra. The earthquake ruptured northward for nearly 10 minutes, causing a maximum displacement of over 20 m and producing a tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean basin.

intern conducting field work at sea, sitting on the edge of a boat with a lifejacket on and the sea in the background. He is holding a pen in his right hand and papers in his lap, writing down information.

Meet Erfan, an intern from the student career intern program! He is is a Ph.D. student in Oceanography at the University of Washington, specializing in underwater acoustics and Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS). Learn more about the work Erfan does in his interview: https://loom.ly/L9pMsh4

Seismic waves race through Earth’s interior 🏁 They zoom through cold, rigid material and crawl through hot, soft zones. What does the journey from earthquake to receiver look like for a seismic wave? Find out on the new Seismology page of our "What is geophysics?" section ➡ https://loom.ly/LlGzbB0

Infographic explaining how InSAR detects landscape changes by comparing two radar satellite passes—before and after surface deformation. A radar signal is emitted and reflected from the ground during each pass; changes in signal phase between passes reveal ground movement. Background and bottom border show rainbow-colored interferograms.

🌍🛰️ The countdown is on, just one week until the launch of #NISAR, a joint NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite mission that will revolutionize global studies of Earth's surface.

Curious how we use satellites to study Earth? Learn more about InSAR ⬇️
https://loom.ly/XFSYdY8