Japan Earthquake Moved Coastline 820 Feet

The New Year's Day earthquake rocked Japan so significantly that the country's coastline shifted by as much as 820 feet, more than the length of two US football fields. The 7.6 magnitude January 1 quake caused significant uplift in some parts of the Noto Peninsula, Live Science reports. Nahel Belgherze, an electronics technician who covers extreme weather events around the globe, shared satellite images on X showing the coastline change, NDTV reports. The images compare June 2023 with January 2 of this year, after the tsunami caused by the earthquake had subsided. They show how the previously underwater seafloor has risen above the water in that area, creating new beaches and leaving some ports dry, so boats can't reach them.

"During a field investigation along the northwest coast of the Noto Peninsula, we found evidence at 10 locations, from Kaiso to Akasaki sites, of coseismic coastal uplift related to the Noto Peninsula Earthquake (M7.6)," researchers with the Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo said in a statement on January 4. "The pattern of estimated coseismic coastal uplift appears to be decreasing southward from Kaiso to Akasaki." The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) also captured the phenomenon, and has details here. (More Japan stories.)