At least three major aftershocks rocked central Chile on Thursday, striking minutes before its president-elect was sworn into office to take charge of a country still reeling from a devastating earthquake nearly two weeks ago.

Chile's Navy rapidly issued a tsunami alert, and Chilean television carried reports of residents of coastal areas fleeing for higher ground. There were no immediate reports of damage, but in the capital of Santiago, 95 miles north of the epicenters, windows rattled, buildings trembled and cell phone service went down.

In the coastal city of Valparaiso, about 90 miles from the site of Thursday's earthquakes, dignitaries who gathered for the inauguration of President Sebastian Pinera made nervous jokes and glanced at the shuddering ceiling of the congressional building as the quakes hit, according to news reports. (SFGATE.COM)

Sailors often whisper of monster waves when ships sink mysteriously but, until now, no one quite believed them.

As part of a project called MaxWave - which was set up to test the rumours - two Esa satellites surveyed the oceans.

During a three week period they detected 10 giant waves, all of which were over 25m (81ft) high.

Strange disappearances

Over the last two decades more than 200 super-carriers - cargo ships over 200m long - have been lost at sea. Eyewitness reports suggest many were sunk by high and violent walls of water that rose up out of calm seas.

But for years these tales of towering beasts were written off as fantasy; and many marine scientists clung to statistical models stating monstrous deviations from the normal sea state occur once every 1,000 years.

In comparison to previous years, the number of casualties from natural disasters in 2010, which is already well above 200,000, is outside the norm. Yet as in other disastrous years, the high toll this year is due largely to a single event.

Over the decade from 2000 to the end of 2009, the yearly average was 78,000, according to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR). For the 1990s, the average was 43,000, and the 1980s was 75,000. Disaster experts say the rise in tragedy is at least partly due to increases in urban populations. Last year was below the decadal average with 10,416 natural disaster-related deaths, according to the ISDR, with most resulting from a 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Sumatra, Indonesia on Sept. 30. (LIVESCIENCE)

"It's time to get ready," Michelann Ooten of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said Tuesday as she surveyed damage from a storm that destroyed five homes and tore the roofs off several others in Hammon.

The nation typically will see 70-100 tornadoes by early March, but only 42 had been reported until Monday night's Oklahoma tornado. There was only one tornado nationwide during February.

"No one would argue that we're going to see a pretty good increase in the number of severe storms," said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist with the national Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. "But each year's a little different. The number, magnitude, number of days are all very tentative at this point."

1. Earth has been more seismologically active in the past 15 years or so, says Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science & Technology. Not all seismologist agree, however.

2. San Francisco is moving toward Los Angeles at the rate of about 2 inches per year — the same pace as the growth of your fingernails — as the two sides of the San Andreas fault slip past one another. The cities will meet in several million years. However, this north-south movement also means that despite fears, California won't fall into the sea.

3. March is not earthquake month, despite what some people believe. True, on March 28, 1964, Prince William Sound, Alaska, experienced a 9.2 magnitude event — one of the biggest ever. It killed 125 people and caused $311 million in property damages. And on March 9, 1957, the Andreanof Islands, Alaska, felt a 9.1 temblor. But the next three biggest U.S. earthquakes occurred in February, November, and December. The devastating major earthquake in Chile of 2010 struck on Feb. 27. And the huge 9.3 temblor that spawned the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 occurred on Dec. 26. (Finish Reading : LiveScience.com)

The massive earthquake that struck near Maule in Chile, moved the entire city of Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west, experts have revealed.

The destructive event, which measured a magnitude of 8.8, also shifted other parts of South America as far apart as the Falkland Islands and Fortaleza, Brazil.

A graphic created by the Central and Southern Andes GPS Project. It shows the displacement in centimetres of the area surrounding the Chile earthquake epicentre. Concepcion moved the furthest at 303.9cm

Scientists measured the impact of the February 27 earthquake by comparing precise GPS locations from before the event to those 10 days later.

These revealed Chile's capital, Santiago, moved about 11 inches to the southwest. Even Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, which is 800miles from the epicentre, moved an inch.

The earthquake is believed to be the fifth most powerful since seismic measurements began.

It even knocked Earth a little off its axis. Nasa's Dr Richard Gross calculated the tremors moved the axis about which Earth's mass is balanced by about three inches. It even shortened the length of the day by about one-millionth of a second. (DailyMail UK)

Turkey's crisis center said about 100 other people were injured in the quake, which hit at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) in Elazig province, about 340 miles (550 kilometers) east of Ankara, the capital.

The earthquake, which caught many people as they slept, was centered near the village of Basyurt and followed by more than 50 aftershocks, the strongest measuring 5.5 and 5.3, the Kandilli seismology center said. (YAHOO )

The mini-cyclone which smashed into the regional capital with winds of up to 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour was an event which had likely not been seen since early last century, Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Kevin Parkyn said.

Just 50 miles off the Pacific Northwest coast is an earthquake hot spot that threatens to unleash on Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, British Columbia, the kind of damage that has shattered Chile.

The fault has been dormant for more than 300 years, but when it awakens - today or decades from now - the consequences could be devastating.

Recent computer simulations of a hypothetical magnitude-9 quake found that shaking could last two to five minutes - strong enough to potentially cause poorly constructed buildings from British Columbia to Northern California to collapse and severely damage highways and bridges.

Such a quake also would send powerful tsunami waves rushing to shore in minutes. While big cities such as Portland and Seattle would be protected from severe flooding, low-lying seaside communities may not be as lucky.

The earthquake that struck Chile on Saturday may have shifted the Earth's axis and created shorter days, according to scientists at Nasa. Richard Gross, a geophysicist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the 8.8 magnitude quake could have moved the Earth's axis by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8cm) – enough to shorten a day by about 1.26 microseconds.

A large quake can shift huge amounts of rock and alter the distribution of mass on the planet. When that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates, which determines the length of a day.

"The length of the day should have got shorter by 1.26 microseconds," Gross told the Bloomberg news agency. "The axis about which the Earth's mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds."

Gross previously used the technique to estimate the shift caused by the 2004 Sumatran quake that caused the Indian Ocean tsunami. That 9.1 magnitude quake shifted the Earth's axis by 2.3 milliarcseconds and shortened a day by 6.8 microseconds.

Although just a few weeks separated the Haiti and Chile earthquakes, scientists say the two disasters are unlikely to be linked.

While the sort of 8.8 magnitude quake that struck South America at the weekend is an annual event, the sort of magnitude 7 quake that hit Haiti was common - occurring somewhere in the world once a week.

Despite the speculation of some geologists, there is no hard evidence to link earthquakes that occur thousands of miles and several weeks apart, according to Prof John McCloskey, a geologist at the University of Ulster.

It is fortunate that one of the biggest earthquakes in recent history has generated only relatively small tsunamis that crossed the Pacific Ocean from Chile to Japan.

This is almost certainly because the rupture that generated the earthquake occurred quite deep in the Earth's crust. The size of a tsunami, which means "harbour wave" in Japanese, is directly related to the volume of water that is displaced during the movement of the seabed during an earthquake. The bigger the amount of water that is moved up or down, the bigger the tsunami that is likely to be created.

Roger Musson, an earthquake scientist at the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, explained that there are two factors to consider. The first is whether or not the movement of the seabed occurred in an area of shallow water – the shallower the water above the rupture, the smaller the tsunami. The second is how deep under the seabed the rupture occurred, with shallow quakes causing a greater displacement of water.

The huge earthquake that struck off the coast of Chile belongs to an "elite class" of mega earthquakes , experts said, and is similar to the 2004 Indian Ocean temblor that triggered deadly tsunami waves .

The magnitude-8.8 quake was a type called a "megathrust," considered the most powerful earthquake on the planet. Megathrusts occur when one tectonic plate dives beneath another. Saturday's tremor unleashed about 50 gigatons of energy and broke about 340 miles of the fault zone, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center.

The quake's epicenter was offshore and occurred about 140 miles north of the largest earthquake ever recorded - a magnitude-9.5 that killed about 1,600 people in Chile and scores of others in the Pacific in 1960.

"It's part of an elite class of giant earthquakes," said USGS geologist Brian Atwater. (source)

The number of people confirmed dead after Chile's earthquake has soared to 708 and is expected to rise further, President Michelle Bachelet has said.

Previously about 300 people had been reported to have been killed in Saturday's 8.8 magnitude quake - one of the most powerful recorded.

Massive damage is hampering rescue teams as they struggle to reach those still buried in the rubble.

The Chilean government has declared a curfew in two of the worst-hit areas.

State television reported that the curfew would apply in the regions of Maule and Concepcion, and begin at 2100 local time (midnight GMT).

The army is being sent to support police to prevent unrest in Concepcion.(BBC)

So far, one fatality has been reported. An eight-year-old boy died, and two other children were injured, a hospital director in Salta revealed.

Officials said that the earthquake in Argentina was not an aftershock of the massive 8.8 magnitude quake that struck Chile. It was a separate event. (ClevelandLeader)

Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake activity. And so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the capital region overnight was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was it outside the realm of normal, scientists say, even though it comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.

One scientist, however, says that relative to a time period in the past, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so. 

The Chilean earthquake, and the tsunami it spawned, originated on a hot spot known as a subduction zone, where one plate of Earth's crust dives under another. It's part of the very active "Ring of Fire," a zone of major crustal plate clashes that surround the Pacific Ocean.

"This particular subduction zone has produced very damaging earthquakes throughout its history," said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The world's largest quake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5, occurred along the same fault zone in May 1960. Even so, magnitude-8 earthquakes occur globally, on average, just once a year. Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, an 8.8-magnitude is much more intense than a magnitude 8, and so this event would be even rarer, said J. Ramón Arrowsmith, a geologist at Arizona State University.

The tsunami racing towards Hawaii right now, set off by the 8.8-magnitude earthquake near Chile's capital, appears poised to strike the city of Hilo first and hardest.

Current predictions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show waves of a little more than 8 feet headed for Hilo. The first wave is expected to strike at about 4:05 p.m. EST. The NOAA does stress on its website that these are only estimates.

This wouldn't mark the first time massive waves have battered Hilo. On May 23, 1960, a tsunami triggered by an earthquake measuring more than 8.0 off the coast of Chile (sound familiar?) deluged Hilo with waves as high as 35 feet, destroying much of the city's downtown and killing 61 people.

The tsunami that struck Hilo on April 1, 1946 may have been even worse. A quake near the Aleutian Islands sent 30-foot waves that ravaged the city. Approximately 159 people were killed in Hawaii, many of them in Hilo.

The good news? The waves in 1946 and 1960 were considerably higher than what's expected today. Additionally, the loss of life was in part attributed to a lack of a warning system in 1946, and a failure of residents to heed the warnings in 1960. In contrast, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports Hilo closed its airport as of 11 a.m. EST, and the state Department of Transportation mobilized vessels and crew this morning to clear the harbor areas. So, hopefully Hilo is prepared to avoid as much damage as possible.(Boston.com )

Warning sirens were sounded in Hawaii at 6 a.m., although any possible tsunami would not strike for several hours. Tsunamis can travel at 400 to 500 mph, the speed of a jet plane, said Georgia Tech geology professor Kurt Frankel.

A large wave killed three people and 10 were missing on the island of Juan Fernandez, 400 miles (643 km) off the coast of Chile, said Provincial Governor Ivan De La Maza.

On mainland Chile, the task of trying to save survivors and recover the dead was fully under way by late morning. Buildings lay in rubble, bridges and highway overpasses were toppled and roads buckled like rumpled paper.

"This is a major event. This happened near some very populated areas," said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "With an 8.8, you expect damage to the population in the area." (CNN)

Chileans near the epicenter were tossed about by the magnitude-8.8 quake as if shaken by a giant. At least 147 people were killed, according to Carmen Fernandez, director of the National Emergency Agency.

The quake shook buildings in Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires, and was felt as far away as Sao PauloU.S. Geological Survey. in Brazil — 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) to the east. About 13 million people live in the area where shaking was strong to severe, according to the

In Talca, just 65 miles (105 kilometers) from the epicenter, furniture toppled as the earth shook for more than a minute in something akin to major airplane turbulence. The historic center of town largely collapsed, but most of the buildings of adobe mud and straw were businesses that were not inhabited during the 3:34 a.m. (1:34 a.m. EST, 0634 GMT) quake.

Neighbors pulled at least five people from the rubble while emergency workers, themselves disoriented, asked for information from reporters.

Collapsed roads and bridges complicated north-south travel in the narrow Andean nation. Electricity, water and phone lines were cut to many areas — meaning there was no word of death or damage from many outlying areas.

Japan's meteorological agency said the 7.0 magnitude quake hit off the country's southern coast, near to the island of Okinawa.

The tsunami warning was quickly downgraded to an advisory and there were no immediate reports of casualties.The quake occurred at a depth of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) at 5:31am local time.

At first the agency predicted a tsunami up to 3 feet (1 metre) near the Okinawan coast but said later it had observed only a small swelling of tide.

Ryota Ueno, a town official in the Nishihara district of Okinawa, said: "I was fast asleep when the quake hit and I jumped out of bed. "It felt like the shaking lasted forever."

Japan is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries. (Sky News)

In 1800, there was just one city with more than a million people - Beijing. Now there are 381 urban areas with at least 1 million inhabitants. Urbanization crossed a threshold last year when, for the first time, more people lived in city settings than rural ones. About 403 million people live in cities that face significant seismic hazard, according to a recent study by seismologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado.

Where could the next big Earthquake be?

The next Big One could strike Tokyo, Istanbul, Tehran, Mexico City, New Delhi, Kathmandu or the two metropolises near California's San Andreas Fault, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Or it could devastate Dhaka, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Cairo, Osaka, Lima or Bogota. The list goes on and on.

The study is an overview of work into one of the scariest yet also one of the least understood aspects of climate change.

Known in the Atlantic as hurricanes and in eastern Asia as typhoons, tropical storms are driven by the raw fuel of warm seas, which raises the question about what may happen when temperatures rise as a result of greenhouse gases.

Tom Knutson and colleagues from the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) looked at peer-reviewed investigations that have appeared over the past four years, when the issue began to hit the headlines. Their benchmark for warming is the "A1B" scenario, a middle-of-the-road computer simulation which predicts a global average surface temperature rise of 2.8 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) over the 21st century.

"It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged," says the paper. But storms could have more powerful winds -- an increase of between two and 11 percent -- and dump more water, it warns.

The report released Tuesday from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) raised the possibility that the quake could be the most destructive disaster in modern history.

Its stark assessment comes with Port-au-Prince still lying in ruins more than one month on, while the bodies of more than 200,000 dead pile up in mass graves outside the capital.

The study's release coincided with what would normally be Haiti's annual carnival, an explosion of pulsing music and colorful parades. But this year, the events have been cancelled as no one is in the mood to party.

The preliminary IDB report estimated the damage at between eight and 14 billion dollars in what was already the poorest country in the Americas before the catastrophe.

Factoring in Haiti's population and economic output, the upper estimate would make it the most destructive natural disaster in modern history, the bank said.

Tess Pennington, 33, is a mother of three children, and lives in the sprawling outskirts of Houston, Texas. But she is not taking the happy safety of her suburban existence lightly.

Like a growing army of fellow Americans, Pennington is learning how to grow her own food, has stored emergency rations in her home and is taking courses on treating sickness with medicinal herbs.

"I feel safe and more secure. I have taken personal responsibility for the safety of myself and of my family," Pennington said. "We have decided to be prepared. There all kinds of disasters that can happen, natural and man-made."

Pennington is a "prepper", a growing social movement that has been dubbed Survivalism Lite. Preppers believe that it is better to be safe than sorry and that preparing for disaster – be it a hurricane or the end of civilisation – makes sense.

Unlike the 1990s survivalists, preppers come from all backgrounds and live all over America. They are just as likely to be found in a suburb or downtown loft as a remote ranch in the mountains. Prepping networks, which have sprung up all over the country in the past few years, provide advice on how to prepare food reserves, how to grow crops in your garden, how to hunt and how to defend yourself. There are prepping books, online shops, radio shows, countless blogs, prepping courses and prepping conferences.