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2016-12-08, Solomon Islands Earthquake, M7.8

A powerful earthquake with magnitude 7.8 occurred on the 8th December 2016 at 17:38:46 UTC near Kirakira in the Solomon Islands. Though the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center first issued a local tsunami warning this was subsequently canceled. There are no reports of fatalities or structural damage. The Solomon Island Arc is known to be very seismically active. Strong earthquakes are observed relatively frequently in this region, however fatalities and structural damage due to ground shaking are fairly rare due to the remoteness of the events, far from population centers.

The M7.8 earthquake was recorded at seismic stations worldwide, including stations of the Irish National Seismic Network (INSN), see seismic traces below showing strong reverberations lasting longer than 2 hours (select figure to enlarge).

For additional information please see these event pages:

USGS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20007z80

EMSC: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/earthquake.php?id=551218

GFZ: http://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/eqinfo/special/gfz2016ycez/

More information about the INSN is available via this link.