On October 29, 2018, when a terrible storm devastated ports, roads, beaches and the seafront in Liguria, the seismographs registered a strange earthquake. Two different apparatuses had detected it and for over a year the CNR researchers worked to understand the causes. Scholars have faced a new phenomenon: an earthquake caused by the power of waves. It is the first case in the Mediterranean. In those days the Upper Adriatic and the Ligurian Sea were affected by a powerful storm that brought the winds to blow at over 200 km per hour in the Dolomites. The earth's vibration caused by sea storms has always been repeated in the coasts of the United States, but in our parts it is detected for the first time. And this, for scholars, is another effect of climate change.
The seismographs of the University of Padua were placed about 40 kilometers from the coasts affected by the storm and for the entire duration of the storms they detected a slight earthquake.
"The vibrations are not produced, as it would seem intuitive, from the waves that arrive on the coast - explains Luigi Cavaleri of the Cnr-Ismar - This effect is so strong but extremely local. The phenomenon of the micro-earthquakes happens when the waves that break on the shore, they immediately reflect towards the open sea, going to overlap with those of opposite sense and generating stationary waves that are able to solicit the bottom with pressure pulses. This impact reaches tens of kilometers from the coast ". The effects of the storm and the storm were devastating. In Liguria a woman died in Albisola Superiore (Savona) hit by a part of a roof flown away. In Rapallo the Foreno dam was destroyed causing a massacre of yachts, in Portofino the road collapsed leaving the village of isolated VIPs, forests were cut down in the Dolomites, in Venice the high water reached one meter and 56 cm.
