Southern Italy鈥檚 active volcanoes mean that living in the region is not for the risk-averse. Less well known, though, is the threat from the sea.
Tsunamis occur around once a century in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1908, a magnitude 7 earthquake created a tsunami that almost destroyed the Italian cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria.
Stefano Lorito of the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology in Rome and his team used historical data to estimate earthquake risk for three different fault zones in the Mediterranean region, and simulated the tsunami that would result from such a quake. (Journal of Geophysical Research, ).
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They found that a major rumble in the quake-prone region off the coast of Greece would trigger a tsunami 5 metres high, which would strike the south-east coasts of Sicily and mainland Italy within an hour. Meanwhile, waves as high as 1.5 metres could be triggered by earthquakes off north Africa and in the Tyrrhenian Sea, north of Sicily.
Other countries could also be vulnerable. 鈥淎 comparable or even greater threat exists for the coasts of Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Greece,鈥� says Lorito.
