2010 Chile earthquake
The 2010 Chile earthquake occurred off the coast of central Chile on Saturday, 27 February at 03:34 local time, having a magnitude of 8.8 on the moment magnitude scale, with intense shaking lasting for about three minutes. It was felt in six Chilean regions, that together make up about 80 percent of the country's population. According to the United States Geological Survey the cities experiencing the strongest shaking—VIII on the Mercalli intensity scale —were Concepción, Arauco and Coronel. According to Chile's Seismological Service Concepción experienced the strongest shaking at MM IX; the earthquake was felt in the capital Santiago at MM VII or MM VIII. Tremors were felt in many Argentine cities, including Buenos Córdoba, Mendoza and La Rioja. Tremors were felt as far north as the city of Ica in southern Peru; the earthquake triggered a tsunami which devastated several coastal towns in south-central Chile and damaged the port at Talcahuano. Tsunami warnings were issued in 53 countries, the wave caused minor damage in the San Diego area of California and in the Tōhoku region of Japan, where damage to the fisheries business was estimated at ¥6.26 billion.
The earthquake generated a blackout that affected 93 percent of the Chilean population and which went on for several days in some locations. President Michelle Bachelet declared a "state of catastrophe" and sent military troops to take control of the most affected areas. According to official sources, 525 people lost their lives, 25 people went missing and about 9% of the population in the affected regions lost their homes. On 10 March, Swiss Reinsurance Co. estimated that the Chilean quake would cost insurance companies between 4 and 7 billion dollars. The rival German-based Munich Re AG made the same estimate. Earthquake's losses to the economy of Chile are estimated at US$15–30 billion. According to the USGS, the epicenter of the earthquake was about 3 km off the coast of Pelluhue, a town in the Maule Region; this is about 6 km west of the village of Chovellén, 15 km southwest of the town of Pelluhue and at a point 100 km away from the following four provincial capitals: Talca, Chillán and Concepción.
Chile's Seismological Service located the quake's epicenter at about 34 km off the coast of Ñuble Province in the Biobío Region. This is 170 km south-west of Talca; the earthquake took place along the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates, at a location where they converge at a rate of eighty millimeters a year. This earthquake was characterized by a thrust-faulting focal mechanism, caused by the subduction of the Nazca plate beneath the South American Tectonic Plates; the end-regions of the rupture zone coincided with the Andean oroclines of Arauco. This has been interpreted as suggesting a link between upper plate rupture length. Chile has been at a convergent plate boundary that generates megathrust earthquakes since the Paleozoic era. In historical times the Chilean coast has suffered many megathrust earthquakes along this plate boundary, including the strongest earthquake measured, the 1960 Valdivia earthquake. Most the boundary ruptured, causing the 2007 Tocopilla earthquake in northern Chile.
The segment of the fault zone which ruptured in this earthquake was estimated to be over 700 km long with a displacement of 10 meters, or 120 years of accumulated plate movement. It lay north of the 1,000 km segment which ruptured in the great earthquake of 1960. Preliminary measurements show that the entire South American Plate moved abruptly westward during the quake. A research collaborative of Ohio State and other institutions have found, using GPS, that the earthquake shifted Santiago 28 cm to the west-southwest and moved Concepción at least 3 metres to the west; the earthquake shifted other parts of South America from the Falkland Islands to Fortaleza, Brazil. For example, it moved Argentina's capital of Buenos Aires about 2.5 cm to the west. Several cities south of Cobquecura were raised, by up to 3 meters; the maximum recorded peak ground acceleration was with a value of 0.65 g. This was the strongest earthquake affecting Chile since the magnitude 9.5 1960 Valdivia earthquake, it was the strongest earthquake worldwide since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and until the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake.
It is tied with the 1906 Ecuador–Colombia and 1833 Sumatra earthquakes as the sixth strongest earthquake measured 500 times more powerful than the 7.0 Mw earthquake in Haiti one month prior in January 2010. An aftershock of 6.2 was recorded 20 minutes after the initial quake. Two more aftershocks of magnitudes 5.4 and 5.6 followed within an hour of the initial quake. The USGS said that "a large vigorous aftershock sequence can be expected from this earthquake". By 6 March UTC, more than 130 aftershocks had been registered, including thirteen above magnitude 6.0. Shortly after the mainshock seismologists installed a dense network of seismometers along the whole rupture area; this network captured 20.000 aftershocks in the 6 months after the mainshock and shows a detailed picture of the structure of the Chilean margin. Seismicity is focused in the depth range 25–35 km and in a deeper band of between 45 and 50 km depth
Tsunami
A tsunami or tidal wave known as a seismic sea wave, is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Unlike normal ocean waves, which are generated by wind, or tides, which are generated by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, a tsunami is generated by the displacement of water. Tsunami waves do not resemble normal undersea currents or sea waves because their wavelength is far longer. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead resemble a rising tide. For this reason, it is referred to as a "tidal wave", although this usage is not favoured by the scientific community because it might give the false impression of a causal relationship between tides and tsunamis. Tsunamis consist of a series of waves, with periods ranging from minutes to hours, arriving in a so-called "internal wave train".
Wave heights of tens of metres can be generated by large events. Although the impact of tsunamis is limited to coastal areas, their destructive power can be enormous, they can affect entire ocean basins; the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was among the deadliest natural disasters in human history, with at least 230,000 people killed or missing in 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Ancient Greek historian Thucydides suggested in his 5th century BC History of the Peloponnesian War that tsunamis were related to submarine earthquakes, but the understanding of tsunamis remained slim until the 20th century and much remains unknown. Major areas of current research include determining why some large earthquakes do not generate tsunamis while other smaller ones do; the term "tsunami" is a borrowing from the Japanese tsunami 津波, meaning "harbour wave". For the plural, one can either follow ordinary English practice and add an s, or use an invariable plural as in the Japanese; some English speakers alter the word's initial /ts/ to an /s/ by dropping the "t", since English does not natively permit /ts/ at the beginning of words, though the original Japanese pronunciation is /ts/.
Tsunamis are sometimes referred to as tidal waves. This once-popular term derives from the most common appearance of a tsunami, that of an extraordinarily high tidal bore. Tsunamis and tides both produce waves of water that move inland, but in the case of a tsunami, the inland movement of water may be much greater, giving the impression of an high and forceful tide. In recent years, the term "tidal wave" has fallen out of favour in the scientific community, because the causes of tsunamis have nothing to do with those of tides, which are produced by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun rather than the displacement of water. Although the meanings of "tidal" include "resembling" or "having the form or character of" the tides, use of the term tidal wave is discouraged by geologists and oceanographers. A 1969 episode of Hawaii Five-O entitled "Forty Feet High And It Kills!" used the terms "tsunami" and "tidal wave" interchangeably. The term seismic sea wave is used to refer to the phenomenon, because the waves most are generated by seismic activity such as earthquakes.
Prior to the rise of the use of the term tsunami in English, scientists encouraged the use of the term seismic sea wave rather than tidal wave. However, like tsunami, seismic sea wave is not a accurate term, as forces other than earthquakes – including underwater landslides, volcanic eruptions, underwater explosions, land or ice slumping into the ocean, meteorite impacts, the weather when the atmospheric pressure changes rapidly – can generate such waves by displacing water. While Japan may have the longest recorded history of tsunamis, the sheer destruction caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami event mark it as the most devastating of its kind in modern times, killing around 230,000 people; the Sumatran region is accustomed to tsunamis, with earthquakes of varying magnitudes occurring off the coast of the island. Tsunamis are an underestimated hazard in the Mediterranean Sea and parts of Europe. Of historical and current importance are the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami, the 1783 Calabrian earthquakes, each causing several tens of thousands of deaths and the 1908 Messina earthquake and tsunami.
The tsunami claimed more than 123,000 lives in Sicily and Calabria and is among the most deadly natural disasters in modern Europe. The Storegga Slide in the Norwegian Sea and some examples of tsunamis affecting the British Isles refer to landslide and meteotsunamis predominantly and less to earthquake-induced waves; as early as 426 BC the Greek historian Thucydides inquired in his book History of the Peloponnesian War about the causes of tsunami, was the first to argue that ocean earthquakes must be the cause. The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent the sea is driven back, recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see; the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus described the typical sequence of a tsunami, including an incipient earthquake, the sudden retreat of the sea and a followin
Associated Press
The Associated Press is a U. S.-based not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a unincorporated association, its members are U. S. newspapers and broadcasters. Its Statement of News Values and Principles spells out its practices; the AP has earned 52 Pulitzer Prizes, including 31 for photography, since the award was established in 1917. The AP has counted the vote in U. S. elections since 1848, including national and local races down to the legislative level in all 50 states, along with key ballot measures. AP collects and verifies returns in every county, parish and town across the U. S. and declares winners in over 5,000 contests. The AP news report, distributed to its members and customers, is produced in English and Arabic. AP content is available on the agency's app, AP News. A 2017 study by NewsWhip revealed that AP content was more engaged with on Facebook than content from any individual English-language publisher; as of 2016, news collected by the AP was published and republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters.
The AP operates 263 news bureaus in 106 countries. It operates the AP Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative; as part of their cooperative agreement with the AP, most member news organizations grant automatic permission for the AP to distribute their local news reports. The AP employs the "inverted pyramid" formula for writing which enables the news outlets to edit a story to fit its available publication area without losing the story's essentials. Cutbacks at rival United Press International in 1993 left the AP as the United States' primary news service, although UPI still produces and distributes stories and photos daily. Other English-language news services, such as the BBC, Reuters and the English-language service of Agence France-Presse, are based outside the United States.
The Associated Press was formed in May 1846 by five daily newspapers in New York City to share the cost of transmitting news of the Mexican–American War. The venture was organized by Moses Yale Beach, second publisher of The Sun, joined by the New York Herald, the New York Courier and Enquirer, The Journal of Commerce, the New York Evening Express; some historians believe. The New York Times became a member shortly after its founding in September 1851. Known as the New York Associated Press, the organization faced competition from the Western Associated Press, which criticized its monopolistic news gathering and price setting practices. An investigation completed in 1892 by Victor Lawson and publisher of the Chicago Daily News, revealed that several principals of the NYAP had entered into a secret agreement with United Press, a rival organization, to share NYAP news and the profits of reselling it; the revelations led to the demise of the NYAP and in December 1892, the Western Associated Press was incorporated in Illinois as The Associated Press.
A 1900 Illinois Supreme Court decision —that the AP was a public utility and operating in restraint of trade—resulted in AP's move from Chicago to New York City, where corporation laws were more favorable to cooperatives. When the AP was founded, news became a salable commodity; the invention of the rotary press allowed the New York Tribune in the 1870s to print 18,000 papers per hour. During the Civil War and Spanish–American War, there was a new incentive to print vivid, on-the-spot reporting. Melville Stone, who had founded the Chicago Daily News in 1875, served as AP General Manager from 1893 to 1921, he embraced the standards of accuracy and integrity. The cooperative grew under the leadership of Kent Cooper, who built up bureau staff in South America, Europe and, the Middle East, he introduced the "telegraph typewriter" or teletypewriter into newsrooms in 1914. In 1935, AP launched the Wirephoto network, which allowed transmission of news photographs over leased private telephone lines on the day they were taken.
This gave AP a major advantage over other news media outlets. While the first network was only between New York and San Francisco AP had its network across the whole United States. In 1945, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Associated Press v. United States that the AP had been violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by prohibiting member newspapers from selling or providing news to nonmember organizations as well as making it difficult for nonmember newspapers to join the AP; the decision facilitated the growth of its main rival United Press International, headed by Hugh Baillie from 1935 to 1955. AP entered the broadcast field in 1941. In 1994, it established a global video newsgathering agency. APTV merged with WorldWide Television News in 1998 to form APTN, which provides video to international broadcasters and websites. In 2004, AP moved its world headquarters from its longtime home at 50 Rockefeller Plaza to a huge building at 450 West 33rd Street in Manhattan—which houses the New York Daily News and the studios of New York's public television station, WNET.
In 2009, AP had more than 240 bureaus globally. Its mission—"to gather with economy and efficiency an accurate and impartial report of the news"—has not changed since its founding, but digital technology has made the distribution of the AP news report an interact
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on 26 December, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Sumatra. It was an undersea megathrust earthquake that registered a magnitude of 9.1–9.3 Mw, reaching a Mercalli intensity up to IX in certain areas. The earthquake was caused by a rupture along the fault between the Indian Plate. A series of large tsunamis up to 30 metres high were created by the underwater seismic activity that became known collectively as the Boxing Day tsunamis. Communities along the surrounding coasts of the Indian Ocean were affected, the tsunamis killed an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries; the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh reported the largest number of victims. The earthquake was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history; the direct results caused major disruptions to living conditions and commerce in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The earthquake was the third largest recorded and had the longest duration of faulting observed.
It caused the planet to vibrate as much as 1 centimetre, it remotely triggered earthquakes as far away as Alaska. Its epicentre was between mainland Sumatra; the plight of the affected people and countries prompted a worldwide humanitarian response, with donations totaling more than US$14 billion. The event is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake; the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was documented as having a moment magnitude of 8.8. In February 2005, scientists revised the estimate of the magnitude to 9.0. Although the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has accepted these new numbers, the United States Geological Survey has so far not changed its estimate of 9.1. A 2006 study estimated a magnitude of Mw 9.1–9.3. The hypocentre of the main earthquake was 160 km off the western coast of northern Sumatra, in the Indian Ocean just north of Simeulue island at a depth of 30 km below mean sea level; the northern section of the Sunda megathrust ruptured over a length of 1,300 km.
The earthquake was felt in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Splay faults, or secondary "pop up faults", caused long, narrow parts of the sea floor to pop up in seconds; this elevated the height and increased the speed of waves, destroying the nearby Indonesian town of Lhoknga. Indonesia lies between the Pacific Ring of Fire along the north-eastern islands adjacent to New Guinea, the Alpide belt that runs along the south and west from Sumatra, Bali, Flores to Timor; the 2002 Sumatra earthquake is believed to have been a foreshock, preceding the main event by over two years. Great earthquakes, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, are associated with megathrust events in subduction zones, their seismic moments can account for a significant fraction of the global seismic moment across century-scale time periods. Of all the moment released by earthquakes in the 100 years from 1906 through 2005 one-eighth was due to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake; this quake, together with the Good Friday earthquake and the Great Chilean earthquake, account for half of the total moment.
Since 1900, the only earthquakes recorded with a greater magnitude were the 1960 Great Chilean earthquake and the 1964 Good Friday earthquake in Prince William Sound. The only other recorded earthquakes of magnitude 9.0 or greater were off Kamchatka, Russia, on 4 November 1952 and Tōhoku, Japan in March 2011. Each of these megathrust earthquakes spawned tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean. However, in comparison to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, the death toll from these earthquakes was lower because of the lower population density along the coasts near affected areas, the much greater distances to more populated coasts, the superior infrastructure and warning systems in MEDCs such as Japan. Other large megathrust earthquakes occurred in 1868. All of them are believed to be greater than magnitude 9, but no accurate measurements were available at the time; the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was unusually large in geological extent. An estimated 1,600 kilometres of fault surface slipped about 15 metres along the subduction zone where the Indian Plate slides under the overriding Burma Plate.
The slip did not happen instantaneously but took place in two phases over several minutes: Seismographic and acoustic data indicate that the first phase involved a rupture about 400 kilometres long and 100 kilometres wide, 30 kilometres beneath the sea bed—the largest rupture known to have been caused by an earthquake. The rupture proceeded at about 2.8 kilometres per second, beginning off the coast of Aceh and proceeding north-westerly over about 100 seconds. After a pause of about another 100 seconds, the rupture continued northwards towards the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. However, the northern rupture occurred more than in the south, at about 2.1 km/s, continuing north for another five minutes to a plate boundary where the fault t
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At 165,250,000 square kilometers in area, this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of Earth's land area combined; the centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific, its mean depth is 4,000 meters. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 meters; the western Pacific has many peripheral seas. Though the peoples of Asia and Oceania have traveled the Pacific Ocean since prehistoric times, the eastern Pacific was first sighted by Europeans in the early 16th century when Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the great "southern sea" which he named Mar del Sur.
The ocean's current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favorable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means "peaceful sea". Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. About 3000 BC, the Austronesian peoples on the island of Taiwan mastered the art of long-distance canoe travel and spread themselves and their languages south to the Philippines and maritime Southeast Asia. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan. Trade, therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of this trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality. From 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean; the first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca.
The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would result in the first world circumnavigation. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters; the ocean was called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century. Although Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521, Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the remains of the expedition back to Spain across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, completing the first world circumnavigation in a single expedition in 1522. Sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, Papua New Guinea.
In 1542–43 the Portuguese reached Japan. In 1564, five Spanish ships carrying 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi, sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. For the remainder of the 16th century, Spanish influence was paramount, with ships sailing from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines via Guam, establishing the Spanish East Indies; the Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries, linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history. Spanish expeditions discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the quest for Terra Australis, Spanish explorations in the 17th century, such as the expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, discovered the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos, sailed the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, named after navigator Luís Vaz de Torres. Dutch explorers, sailing around southern Africa engaged in discovery and trade.
In the 16th and 17th centuries Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers. As the only known entrance from the Atlantic, the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western side of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines; the 18th cen
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Japan Meteorological Agency
The Japan Meteorological Agency, JMA, is an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism. It is charged with gathering and providing results for the public in Japan, that are obtained from data based on daily scientific observation and research into natural phenomena in the fields of meteorology, hydrology and volcanology, among other related scientific fields, its headquarters is located in Tokyo. JMA is responsible for gathering and reporting weather data and forecasts for the general public, as well as providing aviation and marine weather. JMA other responsibilities include issuing warnings for volcanic eruptions, the nationwide issuance of earthquake warnings of the Earthquake Early Warning system. JMA is designated one of the Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers of the World Meteorological Organization, it is responsible for forecasting and distributing warnings for tropical cyclones in the Northwestern Pacific region, including the Celebes Sea, the Sulu Sea, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.
August 26, 1872 – The first weather station in Japan set up in Hakodate, Hokkaido. It is the precursor of the present Hakodate Weather Station. June 1875 – The original Tokyo Meteorological Observatory was formed within the Survey Division of Geography Bureau of Home Ministry. January 1, 1887 – The Tokyo Meteorological Observatory was renamed as the Central Meteorological Observatory, with the transfer of its jurisdiction to the Home Ministry. April 1895 – The Ministry of Education replaced the preceding ministry as an administrator of the Observatory. January 1, 1923 – The main office moved to Motoe-machi, Kōjimachi-ku, where it is near a moat surrounding the Imperial Palace. November 1943 – The Ministry of Transport and Communications took over the CMO's operation. May 1945 – It became part of the Ministry of Transport. July 1, 1956 – The Central Meteorological Observatory became an agency of the Ministry of Transport, has been renamed to the Japan Meteorological Agency. March 1964 – The headquarters office was relocated to the present building in Ōtemachi, Chiyoda-ku.
January 6, 2001 – The JMA becomes an agency of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism with the Japanese government reformation. 2013 – It has been announced that it would be scheduled to move the headquarters into Toranomon, Minato-ku. The JMA is responsible not only for gathering and reporting weather data and forecasts in Japan, but for observation and warning of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions; the agency has six regional administrative offices, four Marine Observatories, five auxiliary facilities, four Aviation Weather Service Centers and 47 local offices composed of the LMOs. These are used to gather data, supplemented by weather satellites such as Himawari, other research institutes. In 1968, the World Meteorological Organization designated the JMA as a Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre for Asia. In June 1988, the WMO assigned the JMA as a RSMC for the Northwestern Pacific under its Tropical Cyclone programme. In July 1989, the RSMC Tokyo – Typhoon Center was established within the headquarters office, which dealt with the forecasting and dissemination of active tropical cyclones, as well as preparing a summary of each year's cyclone activity.
Each DMO and LMO issues weather forecasts and warnings or advisories to the general public live in its own area. Weather data used to these forecasts are acquired from the Surface Observation, the Radar Observation, the Upper-air Observation and the Satellite Observation using the Himawari series; the Marine Observatories are seated in Hakodate, Maizuru and Nagasaki. These stations observe ocean waves, tide levels, sea surface temperature and ocean current etc. in the Northwestern Pacific basin, as well as the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk basin, provide marine meteorological forecasts resulted from them, in cooperation with the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Department, Japan Coast Guard. In 2005, in accordance with the ICAO's new CNS/ATM system, the Civil Aviation Bureau of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Tourism set up the Air Traffic Management Center in Fukuoka, where the FIR is fixed. Along with this establishment, JMA placed the Air Traffic Meteorology Center inside the ATMC.
The agency forecasts SIGMET for aircraft in flight within the Fukuoka FIR airspace, while VOLMET is broadcast by each Aviation Weather Service Centers at the airports of Haneda, Narita and Kansai. Additionally, Aviation Weather Stations deal with the similar tasks as these. In the Northwestern Pacific area, the typhoon season ordinarily comes from May to November; the JMA forecasts and warns or advises on tropical cyclones to the public in Japan and its surrounding countries as well because it works as the RSMC Tokyo – Typhoon Center. The JMA has its own 624 observation stations across the country that set up at intervals of 20 km in order to measure seismic intensity of earthquakes precisely; the agency utilize about 2,900 more seismographs owned by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention and local governments. A 24-hour office has been housed within the JMA headquarters in Tokyo, for monitoring and tra
