Earthquake of 4.2 magnitude strikes Afghanistan & Tibet

An earthquake of magnitude 4.2 on the Richter Scale jolted Afghanistan  and Tibet on Tuesday, as per a statement by the National Center for Seismology.

Earlier, an earthquake of magnitude 4.2 jolted Afghanistan on Sunday, a statement by the National Center for Seismology (NCS) said.As per the NCS, the earthquake occurred at a depth of 140km

Shallow earthquakes like this one are more dangerous than deeper ones due to their greater energy release closer to the Earth's surface, causing stronger ground shaking and increased damage to structures and casualties, compared to deeper earthquakes which lose energy as they travel to the surface.

As per the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), Afghanistan remains highly vulnerable to natural disasters, including seasonal flooding, landslides and earthquakes.

These frequent earthquakes in Afghanistan and Tibet cause damage to vulnerable communities, which are already grappling with decades of conflict and under-development and have left them with little resilience to cope with multiple simultaneous shocks, UNOCHA noted.

Afghanistan has a history of powerful earthquakes, with the Hindu Kush Mountain range being a geologically active area where quakes occur every year, as per the Red Cross.

Afghanistan sits on numerous fault lines between the Indian and the Eurasian tectonic plates, with a fault line also running directly through Herat.

 

An earthquake of magnitude 4.2 on the Richter Scale jolted Tibet on Tuesday, as per a statement by the National Center for Seismology.

A day earlier, an earthquake of 4.2 magnitude on the Richter Scale struck Tibet, as per the statement by the National Center for Seismology (NCS).

According to the NCS, the earthquake occurred at a shallow depth of 10km, making it susceptible to potential aftershocks.

The Tibetan Plateau is known for its seismic activity due to tectonic plate collisions.

Tibet and Nepal lie on a major geological fault line where the Indian tectonic plate pushes up into the Eurasian plate, and earthquakes are a regular occurrence. The region is seismically active, causing tectonic uplifts that can grow strong enough to change the heights of the Himalayas' peaks, as per Al Jazeera.

"Education about earthquakes and earthquake-resilient buildings combined with funding for retrofits and resilient structures can help protect people and buildings when strong earthquakes occur," Marianne Karplus, a seismologist and geophysicist, told Al Jazeera earlier.

"The earth system is very complex, and we cannot predict earthquakes. However, we can conduct scientific studies to better understand what causes earthquakes in Tibet and to better understand the shaking and impacts resulting from earthquakes," Karplus, who is a professor of geological sciences at the University of Texas at El Paso, told Al Jazeera.