Brian Atwater, AS ’80/PhD, shrugs off any suggestion that he is one of the most influential people in the world.

Atwater, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the University of Washington in Seattle, was selected from thousands of scientists around the world for Time magazine’s 2005 “100 most influential people” list in April.

Atwater and a few other scientists are perched on the list alongside familiar names from other fields—Kim Jong ll, Condoleezza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Rupert Murdoch, Martha Stewart, George W. Bush and John Paul II.

Atwater was cited for his work showing that earthquakes of great magnitude have occurred repeatedly during the last few millennia. He and his colleagues were able to pinpoint one quake with stunning definition—showing it struck the Pacific Northwest at 9 p.m. on Jan. 26, 1700, and spawned a Pacific Ocean tsunami that came ashore in Japan 10 hours later.

Many thought the giant undersea fault known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone was inactive. The fault extends 600 miles along the Pacific coast from southern British Columbia to northern California, and the realization that such a large-scale quake could happen again has altered building codes in the Pacific Northwest.

Atwater’s initial analysis started a geological scavenger hunt across the Pacific, and Atwater gives credit to other members of his research team, as well as to Japanese scientists and UD’s John C. Kraft, H. Fletcher Brown Professor Emeritus of Geology, who taught him the scientific methods he used.

He is clearly uncomfortable taking a lopsided share of the laurels for a joint discovery and more uncomfortable being lauded for tsunami research just four months after 200,000 people succumbed to the Indian Ocean tsunami.

Atwater stresses that dozens of researchers played essential roles in the discovery. He cites key contributions from scientists from the University of Washington and Columbia University who studied the annual tree rings in Washington’s ghost forests. Their analysis revealed that all the trees along four estuaries died at the same moment from a catastrophic event sometime between August 1699 and May 1700. Atwater attributed the death of the trees to tidal flooding caused by the subsidence (or sinking of land) generated by the 1700 quake.

Records from Japan show that a tsunami of remote origin struck the Pacific coast of Honshu, the nation’s main island, on Jan. 27 and 28, Japan time. Among the losses was a vessel, bound for Edo (now Tokyo), carrying 30 metric tons of rice.

Atwater says he hopes that discoveries about past earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest will help to reduce losses from future earthquakes and tsunamis in the region.

“We could make forecasts like weather forecasters do. You know, there’s a 20 percent chance of rain today, so you should carry an umbrella,” he says. “Only here, the umbrella becomes tsunami evacuation routes, building code upgrades, tsunami education for kids and designation of critical structures such as firehouses.”

Atwater says tourist videos of the December tsunami taught millions of television viewers what a real tsunami looked like when the Indian Ocean wave hit. While the international symbol for tsunami is a great curling wave, a real tsunami can pour into towns like a flash flood, he says.

Atwater’s research is teaching that warning signs can be found in coastal geology.

 “We use geological history to figure out what nature’s capable of doing. We have this short time window of our life span or written history, but the major earthquakes are events in the Earth’s history that write their own records,” he says. “We can learn about them centuries after they happen, and we can use that information to alert people that hazards exist.”

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