This coming full moon will be the brightest of the last few year.

“There have been a lot of studies on whether earthquakes on our planet were triggered when the moon was closest to Earth, and no conclusive evidence has ever been found for that,” Goldreich told FoxNews.com. “The idea is that the strain builds up in the Earth until only a small little bit of extra gravitational force could tip it over and cause an earthquake, and this could come from the moon. But there’s been no absolutely no correlation for that.”

Source : http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/12/supermoon-cause-moonquakes-scientist-says

Except the Magnitude 8.9 tremor off the coast of Honshu, Japan, will be a standout event for 2011

No threat to India, says tsunami warning centre

There is no significant tsunami threat to India in the wake of the massive earthquake in Japan, according to the National Tsunami Early Warning Centre here.

Model simulations run by the Centre, housed in the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) here, showed that there was no significant threat to the Indian Ocean, according the warning Centre’s in-charge T. Srinivasa Kumar.

He said a bulletin to this effect had been issued and the situation was being closely monitored.

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NEW DELHI: There is no threat of tsunami along the Indian coast, officials said Thursday after a massive earthquake triggered a devastating tsunami in Japan.  
 
"There is no tsunami threat to India and people should not panic," Shailesh Nayak, ministry of earth sciences secretary, told IANS.  
 
Nayak said the tsunami warnings have been issued to east Asian countries and not in the Indian Ocean.  
 
Following the 2004 tsunami, India in 2007 had set up a tsunami warning centre run by the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad under the ministry of earth sciences.  
 
A massive earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter scale hit Japan early Thursday, triggering tsunamis as high as 10 metres that slammed the far east country's coastal areas. There was no immediate estimate of casualties.  
 
The earthquake struck off Japan's northeastern coast, forcing people to flee their homes.  
 
Tsunami alerts were issued in the Philippines, Taiwan, Guam and Russia as well as islands in the Pacific, and Indonesia.

   Climate models have made great strides in improvement over the past couple of decades and the prediction skill of seasonal rainfall over the El-Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in many of the dynamical models is above 0.7 (out of 1.0), however, the Asian monsoon rainfall (not Indian monsoon alone) prediction skill is below 0.1 in many of these coupled dynamical models. The success of prediction over the ENSO region indicates that there is hope for dynamical models to predict the monsoon rainfall as well. However, failure of almost all at this time indicates that there are some intrinsic problems of predicting the Indian monsoon rainfall. This indicates that a focused mission mode program is required if we are to make any progress in this direction. The major aim of national mission on monsoon is to improve the predictability of monsoon rainfall over India on different time scales,[ i.e., from short-range (1-7 days), medium-range (1 week – 2 weeks), extended range (intra-seasonal, 2-4 weeks) and long-range (one month - one season). However, this can happen only through intensive focused basic research and prediction system development activities. With the concerted efforts of all national R&D organizations and academic institutes, it is expected that the predictability of monsoon rainfall on extended and long range prediction will be improved noticeably during the tenure of National Mission on Monsoon.

   To use dynamical models for issue of operational forecasts, one need access to high performance computers at different centers of the Ministry of Earth Sciences, and only recently a beginning is made to acquire these high performance computers and to achieve the standards of international centers we need to keep upgrading the high performance computers to latest technology and increase the peak performance of these computers.

   The proposed mission will use a dynamical model to setup a framework for issuing of dynamical forecasts. For the mission it has been decided to use the NCEP-CFS model as the core model. However, a plan for improvement of prediction skill of this framework is critical. Recognizing the fact that such a complex problem needs national effort to involve academic and R&D institutes. Ministry of Earth sciences through the national Mission on Monsoon will involving all relevant organizations and research institutes for improving the dynamical prediction of seasonal mean monsoon.

In a meeting held on 6 August 2009 at Trieste, Italy, the Permanent Representatives of South Asian countries with WMO unanimously agreed to establish a South Asian Climate Outlook Forum (SASCOF) and to organize the sessions from 2010 onwards for generating consensus outlooks for the summer monsoon. The offer by India to host the first three sessions of SASCOF was accepted.