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| Image credit: SkyNews |
Scientists have discovered a combination of two feared natural disasters - hurricanes and earthquakes - and they have dubbed them "stormquakes".
The shaking of the sea floor during hurricanes can create tremors similar to a 3.5 magnitude earthquake and can last for a number of days.
According to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the quakes are fairly common, but were not noticed before because they were considered seismic background noise.
"A stormquake is more an oddity than something that can hurt you, because no one is standing on the sea floor during a hurricane," said Wenyuan Fan, a Florida State University seismologist who was the study's lead author.
Scientists hope stormquakes could help then better understand ocean dynamics or even earth's structure.
Storms trigger giant waves in the sea, which cause another type of wave.
These secondary waves then interact with the seafloor - but only in certain places - and that causes the shaking, the research found.
It only happens in places where there is a large continental shelf and shallow flat land.
Mr Fan's team found 14,077 stormquakes between September 2006 and February 2015 in the Gulf of Mexico and off Florida, New England, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador and British Columbia.
A special type of military sensor is needed to spot them.
Hurricane Ike in 2008 and Hurricane Irene in 2011 set off lots of stormquakes, the study discovered.
Source: SkyNews.com
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