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Zhongwen Zhan at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and his colleagues, including researchers at Google, used traffic data from one of the tech giant’s optical fibres to measure changes in pressure and strain in the cable. Using this data, they could detect earthquakes and ocean waves called swells generated by storms.
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Over a nine-month period, the team recorded around 30 ocean storm swell events and around 20 earthquakes over magnitude 5 – strong enough to damage buildings – including the magnitude 7.4 earthquake event near Oaxaca, Mexico, in June 2020. The team had wanted to measure a tsunami, but none occurred during the monitoring.