Earthquakes in Asia affect Singapore: a study

SINGAPORE – Scientists have discovered that a devastating 9.2-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Sumatra in 2004 caused land in Singapore to gradually sink in the years that followed.

They said that while the shift was only a few millimeters per year, it was important to take these measurements into account when studying sea level rise and making plans to adapt to climate change.

Research by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has revealed that major tremors in Sumatra caused land subsidence not only in the republic, but also in neighboring Malaysia and Thailand.

Geologists found that the ground continued to move, even in places more than 600 kilometers away from where the earthquakes occurred.

Without taking into account how land falls and rises, also known as vertical ground movement, the risk of coastal flooding in low-lying areas can be underestimated, they said.

The university announced these results, which were published in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment, on July 10.

“When huge earthquakes hit, they don’t shake the ground for just a few minutes,” said Grace Ng, lead author of the study. “They trigger a slow modification deep within the Earth that can last for years.”

The researchers linked this movement to the mantle beneath the Earth’s crust in an area known as the “Sumatra Back Arc” – the vast region behind the Sumatra volcanoes where Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are located.

To understand this subterranean activity, the team analyzed up to two decades of ground motion data from Global Navigation Satellite System stations across Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. They then compared these recordings with computer models of the Earth’s layers.

They discovered that the observed motion could only be explained if the upper mantle beneath the back arc was weak enough to flow slowly over time. The mantle consists of hot, solid rock that flows very slowly over long periods of time. The weaker the mantle, the easier it flows.

As this underground material moves away, the crust sinks in countries at the back of Sumatra.

Conducting such a study before 2004 would have been difficult, since many of the continuous satellite positioning stations needed to measure long-term deformation were not installed until after the 2004 disaster, noted Ng, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Earth Observatory in Singapore.

A previous 2025 study looking at the causes of vertical ground motion found that three of the strongest earthquakes to hit the ground in Sumatra caused Singapore to sink at rates of up to 2.2 mm per year between December 2004 and April 2012.

Except for this period of tectonic movement, the main island was generally stable, with sinking close to zero, that study found.

Now that researchers better understand the viscosity of the mantle beneath the region, they are modeling the amount of observed ground movement due to the long-term effects of major earthquakes.

The study was conducted by Emma Hill (right), AXA Nanyang Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and acting director of the Singapore Earth Observatory, and Observatory Research Fellow Grace Ng.

Image: National Taiwan University

Most current sea level projections focus primarily on climate factors such as melting ice and warming oceans, noted Emma Hill, professor of earth and environmental sciences at AXA Nanyang and senior author of the paper.

“Our new study shows that land sinking after an earthquake is an important factor in the relative change in regional sea level,” said Hill, who is also director of the Singapore Earth Observatory. “Incorporating these deep geological movements into our models will help us improve coastal planning for low-lying cities.”

Noting that Singapore’s cumulative sinking is on a centimeter scale, Ng said there is still time for policymakers to act. “It is always better to incorporate these models into adaptation plans early than to incur costs by retrofitting (infrastructure) later,” she added.

So far, Ng noted, incorporating changes in tectonic land elevations into local sea level assessments is still at an early stage, with countries such as New Zealand and the United States only beginning to account for these impacts.

In response to media queries, the National Environment Agency’s Meteorological Service of Singapore (MSS), which helped fund the research, said the potential impact of earthquake-induced vertical ground motion on local sea levels is still an emerging area of ​​research.

Hence, these results were not taken into account in the latest Singapore sea level rise forecast published in January 2024.

An MSS spokesperson said: “The Singapore Climate Research Center continues to work with the research community to improve scientific understanding of the factors that may influence local sea level change.”

Ultimately, Ng hopes the study will change the way people in Singapore view the long-term effects of earthquakes in the region.

“In the past, many people thought that Singapore was too far from Sumatra to be affected by earthquakes there,” she said.

“But what we’re trying to raise awareness about is that even though we’re so far away, we have this weak mantle that’s slowly adjusting underneath us after the earthquakes in Sumatra. That’s why we can still experience the effects.”

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