Press Information

05.06.2013 | Record soil moisture in May increased the June flood

The catastrophic floods in the south and east of Germany were substantially intensified in that the soils were saturated with moisture by the wet spring. The heavy rains could therefore not be absorbed into the soil. This is conclusion reached by the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) after an analysis of the characteristics of the current floods and the comparison with previous events.

24.05.2013 | Strong earthquake at exceptional depth

This morning at 05:45 CEST, the earth trembled beneath the Okhotsk Sea in the Pacific Northwest. The quake, with a magnitude of 8.2, took place at an exceptional depth of 605 kilometers. Because of the great depth of the earthquake a tsunami is not expected and there should also be no major damage due to shaking.

17.05.2013 | GPS solution provides three-minute tsunami alerts

GFZ researchers have shown that, by using global positioning systems (GPS) to measure ground deformation caused by a large underwater earthquake, they can provide accurate warning of the resulting tsunami in just a few minutes after the earthquake onset. For the devastating Japan 2011 event, the team reveals that the analysis of the GPS data and issue of a detailed tsunami alert would have taken no more than three minutes.