2025-09-09T13:25:57Z

Imagine the entire planet humming with a mysterious, never-before-heard vibration—lasting nine whole days. In September 2023, scientists across the globe detected an eerie, monotonous seismic hum that didn’t fit any known pattern, rippling from the Arctic all the way to Antarctica. This wasn’t your typical earthquake rumble. Instead, it was a steady, single-frequency vibration—so strange that researchers dubbed it an 'unidentified seismic object,' or USO.

For days, seismic experts scratched their heads. Stephen Hicks, a Research Fellow in Computational Seismology at UCL, and Kristian Svennevig from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, described their reaction as pure bafflement. Never before had seismometers picked up such a persistent, global vibration—one that simply refused to fade away, cycling for over a week.

The suspense was real: what could possibly shake the planet so uniformly for so long? An international team dove into the mystery, tracing the signal with everything from field data and imagery to tsunami simulations and even satellite observations. Their investigation led them to East Greenland’s remote Dickson Fjord, where they uncovered the trigger—a colossal landslide, so massive it dumped enough rock into the fjord to fill 10,000 Olympic swimming pools. The result? A mega-tsunami towering 200 meters (over 650 feet)—that’s like stacking 136 Danny DeVitos or surpassing the height of Seattle’s Space Needle. Scientists say it could be the largest wave seen anywhere on Earth since 1980.

The landslide and subsequent tsunami weren’t just freak accidents. Climate change had been quietly thinning the glaciers in the region, setting the stage for disaster. When the rockslide finally collapsed on September 16, it sent shockwaves—literally—through Earth’s crust. Hicks explained that the resulting seismic wave was caused by a 'seiche': a powerful, back-and-forth sloshing of water in the fjord, echoing nearly 10,000 times in nine days and generating vibrations felt worldwide.

This AI generated newscast about the mega-tsunami and worldwide seismic hum highlights just how deeply climate change, glacier instability, ocean dynamics, and geology interconnect. It marks the first-ever recording of water sloshing—yes, watery waves—transmitting waves through the solid Earth, reverberating globally for days.

To seal the case, another research team used the latest Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, which captured clear evidence of the giant seiche exactly where and when the original scientists predicted. Lead author Thomas Monahan from Oxford called out climate change for fueling never-before-seen extremes, especially in hard-to-measure places like the Arctic. And with satellites like SWOT, scientists can now peer into fjords and remote waters, unlocking secrets where old tech failed.

This AI generated newscast about the Greenland mega-tsunami isn’t just about an epic natural event—it's a chilling reminder of how our changing climate is rewriting the rules of what’s possible on Earth.