El norte de Marruecos podría verse afectado por un tsunami

Alert in the Mediterranean area, and more specifically in North Africa and Northern Morocco in particular. The concern comes from data presented in a study by Spain's Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), which analysed the Averroes marine fault in the Alboran Sea and discovered that its geological characteristics could lead to a tsunami on the coast.

As the CSIC report explains, the Averroes fault in the Alboran Sea could create tsunamis with waves that could reach a height of six metres and take between 21 and 35 minutes to reach the northern coast of the Alawite kingdom. 

The study by the Spanish scientific body was published in the journal Scientific Reports and warns that this fault has a greater capacity to create coastal tsunamis than previously thought. 

As a result, the coastal area of northern Morocco and adjacent areas such as the southern coast of Spain could be affected by the arrival of significant tsunamis, the study warns. 

"These giant waves can pose a threat to coastal populations, damage marine and terrestrial infrastructure and cause an economic and environmental crisis," explained Ferran Estrada, a member of the Institute of Marine Sciences, as reported by Le360.

Tsunamis are usually generated by sudden changes in the seabed caused by the seismic activity of normal and reverse faults. Faults on directional dips have always been ruled out as tsunami triggers.

"The Averroes fault has, at its northwest end, a vertical jump of up to 5.4 metres that would have generated an earthquake of magnitude 7. We studied the activity of the fault over a period spanning 124,000 years and, according to historical records, the last earthquake generated by this fracture may have occurred in 365 AD," added Ferran Estrada.

Using a mathematical model applicable to the variation of the seabed, the researchers calculated the behaviour of the water in the Alboran Sea in the face of a possible new seismic event on the fault.

According to the simulation, the tsunami waves would propagate in two main branches and would reach and inundate densely populated areas of the southern coast of Spain and northern Morocco, with waves that could reach six metres in height and take between 21 and 35 minutes to reach the coast.

In Morocco, the sites under threat are Ras Tarf (with a wave height of 1 metre and an estimated arrival time of about 21 minutes); Punta Negri (with a wave height of 1 metre and an estimated arrival time of 20 minutes); and the new port of Nador (with a predicted wave height of 1 metre and an estimated arrival time of 27 minutes).