Earthquakes of the Caribbean: 2001 - 2020

January 2020 saw some significant earthquake activity in the Caribbean Sea region. A M6.4 earthquake struck the southern coast of Puerto Rico on January 7 and generated a small, non-destructive tsunami. An active swarm of aftershocks continues today (January 30, 2020). A much larger M7.7 earthquake occurred between Cuba and Jamaica on January 28 and thankfully did not generate a damaging tsunami either. Though this earthquake was quite large, it moved the seafloor horizontally rather than vertically. This animation begins with the start of the 21st Century showing all earthquakes of M4 or larger as they happened and concludes with these latest earthquakes.
The Caribbean Sea lies over the Caribbean Plate, a section of the earth’s crust bounded by active faults separating it from other tectonic plates. These other plates include the North American Plate to the north and east and the Pacific Plate to the west. Relative motions between these plates cause earthquakes at their boundaries. Most of the east-west trending boundaries of the Caribbean Plate are “strike-slip” or transform faults such that the plates move past each other horizontally, similar to the famous San Andreas Fault in California. Since they move sideways they do not usually cause earthquakes that move the ocean water above them, though they can trigger landslides that generate tsunamis, such as the M7.0 earthquake in Haiti in 2010. But the boundaries of the Caribbean Plate that run northwest-southeast in Central America and in the Leeward Islands are subduction zones, a type of plate boundary that can produce megathrust earthquakes with large vertical motions that can cause tsunamis, such as M7.3 earthquake in El Salvador in 2012.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) will issue tsunami alerts for any potentially tsunami-causing earthquake in the Caribbean region. These will be posted to:
tsunami.gov
For more information about mitigating tsunami hazards in this region please see the Caribbean Tsunami Warning Program (CTWP):
www.weather.go...
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Earthquake Data Source: United States Geological Survey (USGS)/National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) searchable catalog:
earthquake.usg...
Plate Boundaries Source: UTIG PLATES Project:
ig.utexas.edu/...