In the Media
According to seismologists, a recent Taylor Swift concert held in downtown Seattle had an astonishing impact, shaking the ground with such force that nearby seismometers detected signals equivalent to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake. The event, the "Swift Quake," drew a massive crowd of approximately 70,000 people, accompanied by the vibrant music and lively atmosphere that's typical of Taylor Swift's concerts.
Experts from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, responsible for monitoring earthquake activity in the region, were shocked by the concert's seismic effects. According to NY Times, seismologist Mouse Reusch remarked that it was one of the largest concerts he had witnessed in quite some time, considering both the enormous audience and the concert's elaborate set-up.
Seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, from Western Washington University, explained that they gauge ground vibrations using acceleration, which is then translated into the more familiar Richter scale—a common measurement for earthquakes. The "Swift Quake" recorded a maximum ground acceleration of approximately 0.011 meters per second squared.
Is it too early to think about the impact of the 2026 FIFA World Cup on Whatcom County and lower mainland British Columbia?
If you’re an individual retailer whose business is touched by tourism, maybe. But if you’re responsible for ensuring smooth border crossings to get visitors to the games and businesses, the match clock has started ticking.
For those not immersed in sport, international football’s championship competition — the FIFA World Cup — is coming to 16 cities including Vancouver, British Columbia, and Seattle, with the 48-team soccer tournament culminating in a July 19, 2026 final. Games are expected to begin in the host countries of Canada, the United States and Mexico in early June 2026.
“Many of these travelers may not be fully informed about border-crossing requirements in both directions, which may ‘clog up the works’ for our already limited capacity to process travelers,” said Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University and a speaker at the meeting. “Have you ever been pulled into secondary (screening) at Peace Arch on a summer weekend?”
“I shake it off, I shake it off,” Taylor Swift sang. And boy did her fans deliver.
A Taylor Swift concert in downtown Seattle last weekend shook the ground so hard, it registered signals on a nearby seismometer roughly equivalent to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake, seismologists said.
“It’s certainly the biggest concert we’ve had in a while,” said Mouse Reusch, a seismologist at the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, which monitors earthquake activity in the Pacific Northwest. “We’re talking about 70,000 people and all the music and paraphernalia associated with the concert.”
The so-called “Swift Quake” recorded a maximum ground acceleration of roughly 0.011 meters per second squared, said Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, a seismologist at Western Washington University.
Taylor Swift fans are shaking the ground while they're shaking it off at her The Eras Tour concerts.
A seismologist recently discovered that fans attending Swift's recent concert in Seattle on July 22 and 23 danced so hard that, combined with the sound system, they caused seismic activity that could potentially be compared to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.
Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, a seismologist and geology professor at Western Washington University, tracked the seismic activity from the concert and discovered the movement caused by the Swifties broke the previous record of movement at Lumen Field.
According to seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, the newly-coined "Swift Quakes" occurred on July 22 and 23 at Swift's Eras Tour dates at Seattle's Lumen Field — which saw record attendance on Saturday — CNN reported.
Caplan-Auerbach stated that the Swifties' dance activity caused seismic activity "equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake," per the outlet.
The Western Washington University geology professor noted the occurrences while moderating a Pacific Northwest earthquake group on Facebook.
"I grabbed the data from both nights of the concert and quickly noticed they were clearly the same pattern of signals," she said. "If I overlay them on top of each other, they're nearly identical."
Taylor Swift fans are in their record-breaking era.
After two nights of earth-shaking dancing at Swift’s Seattle “Eras” tour concert at Lumen Field, enthusiastic Swifties caused seismic activity equivalent of a 2.3 magnitude earthquake, according to seismologist Jackie Caplan-Auerbach (WWU).
The “Swift Quake” has been compared to the 2011 “Beast Quake,” when Seattle Seahawks fans erupted after an impressive touchdown by running back Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch. The ensuing celebration was detected on the same local seismometer as the Swift concert, Caplan-Auerbach told CNN.
Taylor Swift closed out her record-breaking concert at Seattle’s Lumen Field last weekend with her twinkly pop hit “Karma.” Little did she know, when she delivered the bridge “Karma is the thunder, rattling the ground,” the ground was literally shaking.
In fact, it shook in a seismic sense for the entirety of her marathon, three-and-a-half-hour show, said Western Washington University geology professor Jackie Caplan-Auerbach.
This week, Caplan-Auerbach is among a few local seismologists combing through the data taken at a seismometer conveniently located right next to Lumen Field.
Western Washington University geology professor Jackie Caplan-Auerbach said she’s part of a Pacific Northwest earthquake Facebook group and saw someone ask how the seismic activity from the two events compared.
“Somebody posted and said 'Well, did the Taylor Swift concert make a Beast Quake?' And I was like 'Oh I am on that, that’s fun',” she said.
She got to work, pulling the data from the two nights of concerts.
In the roughly five decades following the publication of Milton Friedman’s iconic advocacy of profitability as the single normative goal of managers of public companies, innumerable articles and editorials have been written criticizing Friedman’s thesis. Even President Joe Biden publicly rejected the argument that a corporation’s primary responsibility is to its shareholders.
The primary criticism of Friedman’s position is that a sole focus on profitability ignores the social responsibility that businesses have to other constituents (besides shareholders) including consumers, employers, suppliers of inputs, the broader communities where companies do business and, for many, the environment. Today, this critique is associated with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives, which prioritize broader social goals even if they harm the financial interests of shareholders.
-----------------------------------------
Column by WWU CBE emeritus professor Steven Globerman
“There never used to be any funding for this kind of work,” says Robin Kodner, a biologist at Western Washington University who’s at the forefront of a new push to understand what folks in the Pacific Northwest call “watermelon snow” — if they’ve heard of it at all. A nickname for it in the French Alps is sang de glacier, or glacier blood. While red and pink are the most common colors, different types of snow algae produce a rainbow of hues, including orange, yellow and green.
------------------------------
Story features the research of WWU's Robin Kodner and Alia Khan of the College of the Environment