The Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden emerged as the result of a deep geological process that has been going on for the last 30 million years with Arabia moving away from Africa. But even these waters could soon merge into a new, yet-to-be-named ocean, as the world's hottest continent splits apart.

Something is going on underneath the African continent. It has been known for some time that the three tectonic plates, Nubian, Somali and Arabian, that lie beneath the continent's Afar region, have been very slowly peeling apart from each other. Now researchers are able to use satellite images and measurements to study the process more precisely and predict how a new ocean will soon flood the region, according to NBC News.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 jolted 99 km ENE of Hihifo, Tonga at 15:32:43 GMT on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The epicenter, with a depth of 33.0 km, was initially determined to be at 15.5 degrees south latitude and 173.0 degrees west longitude.

An earthquake of a magnitude of 5.9 degrees, according to consolidated information from the National Seismological Center, was recorded at 1.40 am this Friday in the Tarapacá Region.

The epicenter of the tremor was located 4 kilometers northeast of Alto Hospicio, while its hypocenter was recorded at a depth of 77 kilometers.

In that commune, in addition to Iquique and the town of La Tirana, the movement reached a degree VI intensity on the Mercalli scale.

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the region of eastern Papua New Guinea at a depth of 85.5km, the US Geological Survey reported. A tsunami warning was issued.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center put out an alert for "hazardous waves" for coastal area within 300km of the epicenter of the quake, which took place around 8pm Pacific Time.

The National Weather Service later reported that the North American coastline was not in danger.

The USGS initially reported the quake as magnitude 7.3, but later downgraded it to 7.0.

There have been no reports of damage or casualties so far.

Through decades of research, scientists have learned that large, powerful earthquakes commonly occur in groups, not in random patterns. But exactly why has so far remained a mystery. Now, new research, published July 13 in Scientific Reviews, asserts the first strong — though still disputed — evidence that powerful eruptions on the Sun can trigger mass earthquake events on Earth.

"Large earthquakes all around the world are not evenly distributed ... there is some correlation among them," says Giuseppe De Natale, research director at the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome and co-author of the new study. "We have tested the hypothesis that solar activity can influence the worldwide [occurrence of earthquakes]."

An ongoing earthquake swarm in Iceland has now reached over 10,000 quakes since it began on June 19. This is the biggest swarm to hit the Tjörnes Fracture zone in the north of the country in almost half a century, and experts are unsure what is causing it.

The earthquake swarm to the northeast of the town of Siglufjörður is ongoing. Experts with the Iceland Meteorological Office (IMO) said that of the 10,000 earthquakes, three had measured magnitude 5 or above. The largest, magnitude 5.8, hit around 18 miles from Siglufjörður. "Seismic activity if still ongoing and there are chances of more earthquakes of this magnitude occurring in the area," the IMO said in a statement.

Earthquakes have been felt in the area surrounding the swarm. Some of the larger quakes have been felt as far as Reykjavíc, 125 miles away.

Kristín Jónsdóttir, Earthquakes Hazards Officer for the IMO, previously told Newsweek the swarm was the largest recorded in the Tjörnes Fracture Zone in the past 40 years. "It is very difficult to say [when the swarm will end]," she said. "The behavior is episodic, we record hundreds of earthquakes in a few hours and then it becomes quiet and all of a sudden it starts again. The last swarm in 2012 was ongoing for a few weeks. Let's hope we only have a few weeks to go."

The IMO said that between June 22 and 28, over 3,300 earthquakes were recorded in the region. Of these, 2,800 were west of the Húsavík-Flatey Islands fault.

Even today, nobody can reliably predict when and where an earthquake will occur. However, eyewitnesses have repeatedly reported that animals behave unusually before an earthquake. In an international cooperation project, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz/Radolfzell and the Cluster of Excellence Center for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior at the University of Konstanz, have investigated whether cows, sheep, and dogs can actually detect early signs of earthquakes.

To do so, they attached sensors to the animals in an earthquake-prone area in Northern Italy and recorded their movements over several months. The movement data show that the animals were unusually restless in the hours before the earthquakes. The closer the animals were to the epicenter of the impending quake, the earlier they started behaving unusually. The movement profiles of different animal species in different regions could therefore provide clues with respect to the place and time of an impending earthquake.

Experts disagree about whether earthquakes can be exactly predicted. Nevertheless, animals seem to sense the impending danger hours in advance. For example, there are reports that wild animals leave their sleeping and nesting places immediately before strong quakes and that pets become restless. However, these anecdotal accounts often do not stand up to scientific scrutiny because the definition of unusual behavior is often too unclear and the observation period too short. Other factors could also explain the behavior of the animals.

Sheets of rain, floods and hail left a path of destruction all over the world, and the northern hemisphere still got snow in June.

The unbelievable amount of precipitation during the past months can be explained with the increasing amount of charged particles in upper layers of the atmosphere.

When meteors and meteorites pass through our lower atmosphere, or when our planet goes trough a comet dust stream, charged particles accumulate between the ionosphere and the surface of the earth causing storms to intensify, clouds to grow and more rain to fall. Wildfires and volcanic eruptions, for example, also contribute to this accumulation of particles.

At the same time, rain can conduct the accumulated electrical charge of the ionosphere to the ground, which increases the occurrence of other electrical phenomena, as tornadoes, hurricanes and plasma formations.

The accumulation of charged aerosols and increasingly colder temperatures in upper layers of the atmosphere - caused by the current solar minimum - can also be responsible of the increasing amount of hail and unseasonable snow around the world.

Charged particles influence weather much more than has been appreciated.

Heavy rain and raging floods took the life of hundreds and affected millions in south China, and destroyed 1,470 houses and 3 bridges in Gorontalo Province, Indonesia. Heavy floods also hit Assam, India leaving 16 dead and over 253,000 affected.

While Romania got its second coldest day in June, Montana got more than 1 foot of snow and southeast Wyoming got 6 inches... just at the beginning of summer.

Siberia got a share of extreme weather this month, from tornadoes to floods and extreme temperature swings.

A 7.5-magnitude earthquake rattled large swaths of southern and central Mexico, killing at least five people. No major damage was reported.

Locusts continued to ravage Africa, India, Brazil, Argentina and the Middle East, with no sign that they'll be gone soon.

All that and more in our SOTT Earth Changes Summary for June 2020:

A 6.6 magnitude earthquake has struck off the coast of Java in Indonesia.

The monster earthquake hit at 9.54am AEST on Tuesday and has been felt as far as 800 kilometres south east in Bali.

The earthquake hit around 93.8 kilometers north of Batang, a coastal town in Central Java province, The U.S. Geological Survey reported.

The Bureau of Meteorology said there is no threat of a tsunami and no injuries have been reported.

The epicentre was measured at a depth of 528 kilometres after the earthquake hit.

One person shared on social media they felt their apartment shaking in Ubud for around two minutes.

Two earthquakes, one Thursday night and another Friday afternoon, rattled East Hawaii.

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory recorded the first, a magnitude-4.6 temblor located beneath Kilauea Volcano's south flank, at 11:20 p.m. Thursday.

The earthquake was centered about 4.3 miles south of Pu'u 'O'o at a depth of approximately 4.2 miles.

Very light shaking was reported throughout the Big Island, Maui, and Lanai. The U.S. Geological Survey's "Did you feel it?" service received more than 725 felt reports within the first hour after the earthquake.

According to HVO seismologist Ashton Flinders, the earthquake had no apparent effect on Kilauea or Mauna Loa volcanoes.

"Aftershocks are possible and may be felt," Flinders said.

Kilauea's south flank has been the site of 20 earthquakes of magnitude-4.0 or greater during the past 20 years. Most are caused by abrupt motion of the volcano's south flank, which moves to the southeast over the oceanic crust.

This quake was likely an aftershock of the 2018 magnitude-6.9 earthquake as the volcano continues to settle.