A couple of striking facts from a briefing on the earthquake in Japan, and the subsequent tsunami:
According to Dave Applegate, of the US Geological Survey, this quake, measuring "almost nine" on the Richter scale, substantially ruptured the earth's crust, tearing it up for 150 or more miles. Applegate said the energy released by the quake was nearly 1000 times stronger than the Haiti earthquake of last year, with as much as fifty feet of movement.
Grist is featuring a post about a scientific conference in London in 2009 that discussed the climatic forcing of geological events, as reported in this story from Reuters. Not sure how to assess that connection: have a call into the USGS to try and figure it out.
Kit Stolz 