Giant tsunamis triggered by landslides, also known as megatsunamis, are becoming more common around the world as a result of the changes to our climate brought on by planetary overheating, EarthSky reported.
What's happening?
As EarthSky laid out, glaciers and permafrost are melting due to the ongoing overheating of our planet — largely a downstream consequence of our reliance on dirty energy sources like gas and oil. This melting is creating conditions that allow for more landslides, and those landslides, when they flow into bodies of water, are triggering giant waves that cause tsunamis.
In their paper on the subject, a group of researchers from GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany, wrote that much of this is connected to a reduction in slope stability, which increases the risk of megatsunamis.
As the researchers emphasized: "The occurrence and propagation of tsunamis, especially in fjord locations, are considered to be one of the most devastating of all natural disasters."
Why is the melting of the glaciers and permafrost important?
The continued overheating of our planet is causing the world's glaciers to melt increasingly quickly, with research indicating that the more melting that occurs, the faster the remaining melting process will become.
This is not only causing megatsunamis — which are a massive problem that can cause huge amounts of devastation to coastal communities — but a host of other problems as well.
The issue most linked to the melting of the glaciers is rising sea levels. As glaciers continue to melt and disperse their contents into the oceans, sea levels will continue to rise, causing flooding in coastal communities and displacing millions of people.
Thawing permafrost could also cause less publicized issues, such as releasing potent gases, toxic heavy metals, and ancient viruses frozen in the ice for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
What's being done about increasing landslides, tsunamis, and more?
National Park Service Alaska Regional Geologist Chad Hults told KTUU in Anchorage that people camping or boating in Alaska should consider the landscape, avoiding potentially unstable steep slopes.
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As far as the wide-reaching ripple effects from these landslides, however, there is only so much we can do to prepare for megatsunamis.
The most pressing need that we have to address these problems is to stop the overheating of our planet by ceasing our usage of dirty, polluting energy sources like gas and oil — perhaps by making your next car an electric vehicle — and switching to clean, renewable sources like wind and solar.
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