Researchers said: In an study (Indonesian reefs) its found that corals record cyclical environmental events & could predict a massive earthquake in the eastern Indian Ocean within the next 20 years.
The scientists said: the study of corals off Indonesia's Sumatra island showed they have annual growth rings, like those in tree trunks, which record cyclical events such as earthquakes.
Kerry Sieh, professor at the California Institute of Technology's Tectonics Observatory, told: "If previous cycles are a reliable guide we can expect one or more very large west Sumatran earthquakes within the next two decades."
- Scientists said the earthquake could be similarto the magnitude 9.15 earthquake which sparked the devastating 2004 tsunami and left 230,000 people either dead or missing across Asia. More than170,000 of those victims were in Aceh on the northwestern tip of Sumatra.
Sieh said while Thailand and Sri Lanka were unlikely to be affected, people in Sumatra should be prepared. He also mentioned: "The tsunami could be at five meters in Padang (in Sumatra). This is a worse case scenario."
- "When earthquakes push the seafloor upward, lowering local sea level, the corals can't grow upward and grow outwardinstead," the researchers wrote in Science.
- Earlier this month, Sieh and his colleagues reported in the journal Nature that an area off Sumatra that has been the source of disastrous earthquakes, still carried a lot of pent-up pressure that could result in another strong quake.
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