Japan Earthquake: New Year's Day Quake Shifted Coastline Over 800 Feet, Reveal Latest Satellite Images

Weeks after the massive 7.5 magnitude earthquake that rocked the Noto Peninsula on Japan's main island, Honshu, at midnight on New Year's Day, which killed 213 people and around 26,000 in emergency shelters, the latest satellite images show that the earthquake has changed its coastline by 800 km. The photos were shared by the X user (former Twitter) named Nahel Belgherze, who reports on severe weather incidents worldwide.

According to the photos, of the incident, it is revealed that the force was sufficient to build two football pitches for a new beach and leave harbours dry. The images show a significant land uplift at over ten points along the coast. On January 4, the user Belgherze posted the photos and said, "The earthquake that struck Japan's Noto peninsula on Monday was so strong that the coastline has moved up to 250 meters offshore due to significant land uplift."

The images were converted into GIFs and showed pre and post-changes in the location of the Noto Peninsula, the epicentre of the earthquake. The images displayed the before and after positions of the site after the tsunami hit.

According to Space.com, researchers said, "During the field probe along the northwest coast of the Noto Peninsula, we found evidence at 10 locations, from Kaiso to Akasaki sites, of coseismic coastal uplift related to the Noto Peninsula Earthquake (M7.6)." Additionally, they said, "The pattern of estimated coseismic coastal uplift appears to be decreasing southward from Kaiso to Akasaki." The weather site also said that the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2) documented the coastal uplift caused by the earthquake.

In 2011, Japan witnessed the scariest earthquake, escalating it into a tsunami. Due to the quake, 18,500 people were killed or went missing, and resulted in a natural disaster at the Fukushima plant.