Talk:2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami

Conjested opening sentence needs rework and rewording.

Here is the sentence ....

The 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tōhoku (東北地方太平洋沖地震, Tōhoku-chihō Taiheiyō Oki Jishin), or as it's sometimes called in Japan, (東日本大震災, Higashi nihon daishin-sai) also known as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the Great East Japan Earthquake, and the 3.11 Earthquake, was a magnitude 9.0 (M_w) undersea megathrust earthquake off the coast of Japan that occurred at 14:46 JST (05:46 UTC) on Friday, 11 March 2011, with the epicenter approximately 70 kilometres (43 mi) east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tōhoku and the hypocenter at an underwater depth of approximately 32 km (20 mi).

My concerns are:

• Lead sentence is too long with too many concepts to be digested.
• Sentence needs to be segmented into key sections some of which will be bundled: Identification; naming (from whose perspective?); Japanese naming and English equiv; epicentre's geographic location; hypocentre; Date/day/time; strength; type of quake; etc. (as you can see quite a bit is stuffed into this sentence)
• the Japanese naming and English translations dont appear to treated in an orderly manner (probably need a sentence for themselves). Note that the first set of Japanese characters translate as 'Northeast Pacific offshore earthquake', and the second as 'East Japan earthquake' (using Bing translater). Also, the phrase 'also known as the 2011 Tohoku earthquake' seems to be misplaced - should it not be after 'the Great East Japan Earthquake'?

As I am unfamiliar with Japanese and preferred methods of dealing with these matters, I am hoping someone with a good grasp of Japanese and English can have a crack at it and do it justice.

Thanks, Benyoch ^{...Don't panic! Don't panic!...} (talk) 18:17, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Regretfully, I have to pile on here. This is the sentence (actually its second part) I have a problem with: "The earthquake moved Honshu (the main island of Japan) 2.4 m (8 ft) east and shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm (4 in) and 25 cm (10 in).[19][20][21]"

Firstly, I've went to see the sources and I have to say that the people who wrote them don't have an idea even of simple geometry. The DW source and the Montreal gazette are equally inept in producing sensible citation, while the NY times provides better and well formed explanation. None of the newspapers cited actually provided any link to track the information, but I'll assume that the interviews are correct, and the people giving them were indeed specialists.

The second part of the problem is the way the sentence is written: how does one define an "axis shift", I would do it by angular degrees (minutes, seconds etc.), but here we've been given linear measurements, so where exactly this is supposed to be measured? At the poles? 80 km in the sky, at the mass center (where there is no shift, obviously) ... after reading the source it's clear that the shift is measured on the earth surface (even though it's ill defined). Furthermore it's pretty obvious that the shift of mass is responsible for, if any, tilting of the axis, not the earthquake directly. Also in the NY times source it's explicitly stated that the shift was about the "figure axis", and not the rotation axis of the Earth – this is not mentioned here, and the difference is enormous. The style is really misleading and I believe the second part of the sentence should be removed. Also this would improve a bit on the otherwise sensation-seeking tone perceivable from that particular sentence.Kshegunov (talk) 23:49, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

magnitude 9.03 (Mw)

Is it an error?78.156.109.166 (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree - the references all quote magnitude 9.0 from USGS, not 9.03. Where did this number come from? Carl-PG74 (talk) 05:52, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

This man says 9.03. Maybe he's reading this Wikipedia article. Besides, earthquakes never have more than 1 number after the dot, to my knowledge. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drhWhd-i4oE 78.156.109.166 (talk) 09:49, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Convert article to be less news-y

This article has a lot of information in it that is "news-y" in nature (things like Google People Finder being used, lots of "As of" material from around the initial incident, overly specific details about long-dormant relief efforts, etc.) and should be cleaned up to reflect a longer-term view. 146.209.160.253 (talk) 21:36, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Largest in Japan.

Is it? The 869 Sanriku earthquake was believed to could have been around 9.0. 78.156.109.166 (talk) 10:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Damage from the earthquake alone

How much damage/casualties from the earthquake alone (not the tsunami)? --78.156.109.166 (talk) 15:50, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

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About aftershocks

I've been updated aftershocks, but is it better to update aftershocks referenced on Ｍ5.0以上の余震回数(that means "different number of maximum magnitude of the aftershock table M5.0 or more) instead of 震度1以上の余震の最大震度別地震回数表(that means "different number of maximum seismic intensity of the aftershock earthquake table one or more" of Japan Meteorological Agency)? I think that it might have poor meanings on seismic intensity of JMA out of Japan, in the other hand, it may have some meanings that update with same measure in this article. In addition, the magnitudes announced by JMA (Mj) at the first have a little differences when comparing with moment magnitude (Mw) - are increasing in large number of magnitude such as the main shock -, causing necessity to warn tsunami(s) spread to every regions of Japan as fast as possible, then, JMA researches Mw later than announced Mj, and the table that I've just suggested has some corrections in later.--ジャコウネズミ (talk) 22:45, 15 June 2014 (UTC)