One of the most devastating earthquakes in modern times struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010. Occurring at 4:53 pm local time just 25 km (1 km = 0.6 mi) west of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, the earthquake was large (moment magnitude of 7.0) and shallow (focal depth of 13 km). It was felt throughout Haiti and the neighbouring Dominican Republic and as far away as southern Florida. Official estimates put the death toll at over 222,000, with an additional 300,000 injured and 1,300,000 homeless. (See Sidebar ) The massive human losses were attributed in part to relatively poor building construction and the lack of earthquake-resistant design practices. (See Special Report.) Damage was caused by strong ground shaking, soil liquefaction, landslides, rockslides, and a tsunami, which had wave heights (peak to trough) of only 12 cm (about 5 in) and thus resulted in relatively few of the deaths. The Haiti earthquake was produced by left-lateral strike-slip faulting in or near the Enriquillo–Plantain Garden fault zone separating the Caribbean and North America tectonic plates. The relative motion between these plates is considered to be small (7 mm [0.3 in] per year), but slippage along the fault zone probably produced two of the region’s large historical earthquakes, which occurred in 1751 and 1770. Although the 2010 earthquake relieved some of the stress that had accrued, the seismic hazard remained high along this fault zone as well as in the nearby Septentrional fault zone running along the northern coast of Hispaniola, the island on which Haiti and the Dominican Republic are located.
Just six weeks later an even larger earthquake occurred in central Chile. This massive event had a moment magnitude of 8.8, making it the fifth largest earthquake to be recorded with seismometers. The human losses were at least 521 people killed and about 12,000 injured. Compared with the human cost of the Haitian earthquake, that of the Chilean earthquake was light (a result attributed to sound construction practices), though Chile’s economic damages, estimated at $30 billion, were larger than the $8 billion estimated for Haiti. The earthquake produced a tsunami that was recorded by tide gauges across the Pacific basin at amplitudes of tens to hundreds of centimetres. The earthquake began at 3:34 am local time on February 27, and it lasted for more than 120 seconds as it propagated bilaterally away from the epicentre, some 335 km southwest of the Chilean capital of Santiago. The rupture extended nearly 500 km along the megathrust boundary that separates the Nazca plate from the South American plate. The average slip (relative motion) between the two plates during the earthquake was approximately 5 m (16 ft), and the maximum slip was approximately 20 m (66 ft). This region is well known for producing large earthquakes, with the Nazca plate subducting beneath South America at the rapid rate of 80 mm (3.1 in) per year. The 2010 event occurred mostly to the north of the rupture area of the great 1960 earthquake, which, with a moment magnitude of 9.5, was the largest earthquake ever recorded.
The summit caldera of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano began erupting explosively early on the morning of April 14. Scientists had been monitoring several geophysical indicators that preceded the main event—including a swarm of seismicity in 2009–10, increased surface deformation, and an effusive flank eruption that began on March 20. The erupting plume of ash reached a height of more than eight kilometres within the first day, and prevailing winds quickly spread the ash to mainland Europe. Because it was feared that fine particles of tephra in the ash cloud would cause jet engines to fail, the eruption led to a six-day closure of European airspace, causing airlines to lose more than $250 million daily. Significant volcanic activity continued for more than a month after the initial eruption; however, further flight restrictions were minor. Iceland sits at the divergent plate boundary between the North America and Eurasian tectonic plates, and its volcanism is thought to derive from a quasi-cylindrical upwelling of material, referred to as a plume, rising from deep within Earth’s mantle. Geophysicists continued to debate the precise depth of origin for mantle plumes; some argued that they emerge from the very base of the mantle that touches Earth’s liquid outer core, almost 3,000 km below the ocean floor.
In September an international team of scientists reported new evidence that helped explain the surprising stability of continental lithosphere. In contrast to oceanic lithosphere, which exists at Earth’s surface for approximately 200 million years before subducting into the mantle, continental lithosphere may remain at the surface for billions of years after formation. The oldest cores of the continents, cratons, possess exceptionally thick roots (180–250 km deep) that add to the stability of continental lithosphere. The research team measured the amount of water in mantle xenoliths that had been naturally exhumed from the base of South Africa’s Kaapvaal craton during a kimberlite eruption. The scientists searched 18 xenoliths for water by using Fourier transform infrared analysis, a method capable of detecting water at levels as low as parts per million. The xenoliths were found to be exceptionally dry, which implied that the lithospheric mantle of cratons is exceptionally strong, having a viscosity at least 20 times and possibly hundreds of times higher than that of the underlying asthenosphere. Such mechanical strength keeps the cratons from easily breaking up as they experience the tectonic stresses associated with traveling across Earth’s surface.