To think all these earthquakes are strange??

[Mammylamb]

Recently there seems to have been a lot of earthquakes (Japan, nz, Mexico). Is it normal to get so many close together in time? (admittedly thousands of miles apart)

[ComputerUserNotTrained]

Thank you, @Justanotherlurker - fascinating post

[Ta1kinPeece]

guilty100
as on so many other issues, MN posters are not representative.
A lot of people do give a shit about the planet their children will inherit and are making changes

dolly
Yellowstone is a hotspot - like Hawaii - so its much less predictable

[Justanotherlurker]

There is no way there is a proper plan to deal with climate change, you have to be seriously naive to believe that. And the reason is simple: if you mention cutting back on ANYTHING to spoiled Western populations, they go mental.

Hyperbole much !!!, the fact that even with the measures we can take that ensure even your standard of living we would not be sure of when it will slow down, we would also hamper the 3rd world as we would need to mine a lot more rare metals. As we have not yet got the best use of them then it's a can kicking exercise that we need to take slowly.

Professor Bill McGuire
Ah explains the hyperbole:

Short answer, no.

Longer answer, there are a smattering of ideas that in unique circumstances weather, broadly defined, may influence the exact timing of earthquakes but would not change the frequency or severity of earthquakes. An example that pops up now and again is this paper (www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7248/full/nature08042.html?foxtrotcallback=true) from a few years back that argued extreme low atmospheric pressure systems (i.e. big typhoons) might slightly 'unclamp' faults in Taiwan to allow small magnitude earthquakes to occur. They went a bit farther and suggested that this produced 'slow-slip' events as opposed to large more destructive single earthquakes (slow-slip events are a somewhat strange phenomena that occur along many subduction zones where the earthquake energy comparable to a relatively large magnitude earthquake is released gradually over the course of days to months in a HUGE amount of very small earthquakes or something more akin to creep, i.e. episodic tremor and slip events). In detail, people have argued over the exact mechanism, instead suggesting that rainfall may be more important (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JB011807/abstract) in this case and in general our understanding of why slow-slip occurs is still pretty limited so in my mind this type of correlation is extremely tenuous to say the least. Similarly, in Taiwan and the Himalaya it's been argued that erosion from landslides caused by heavy rainfall, and the resulting stress change on faults, can trigger earthquakes (e.g. this NatGeo discussion of a talk, as far as I can tell this research was never published in a journal news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111215-rainfall-hurricanes-typhoons-earthquakes-science-earth/).

The important point for all of this is that these are all earthquake events that were already going to happen and were already likely going to happen in the way that they did, so this comes back to my first statement. These are triggering mechanisms so they might influence the exact timing of an earthquake (i.e. will this earthquake happen tomorrow or in a month) but the ultimate cause is still the nature of the faults they occur on (i.e. what size of rupture can they support, mechanical properties) and the tectonic forces they store (i.e. rates of plate motion, etc). These mechanisms (and they are still pretty controversial so we're already taking a little leap of faith in treating them as certainties here) only trigger events that are on the cusp of already happening. So, with that logic, to the extant that climate change increases the frequency of extreme precipitation events, one might expect a potential increase in the importance of these triggering mechanisms in already active tectonic environments like the ones above, but there is no reason to expect changes in either global frequency of events (i.e. the Gutenberg-Richer relationship won't change en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg%E2%80%93Richter_law ) or severity of events as these are dictated by the tectonic forces. Also, to head off any potential follow-up questions, it's important to realise that these triggers seem to be inconsistent, meaning that not all similar precipitation events in tectonically active areas cause similar earthquakes to happen (again, because it ultimately depends on the pre-existing state of the faults more than anything else) so these aren't useful for 'predicting' earthquakes in any sense.

[dollydayscream]

Is Jellystone Yellowstone about to blow? Shall we all move over to the Preppers board?

[guilty100]

There is no way there is a proper plan to deal with climate change, you have to be seriously naive to believe that. And the reason is simple: if you mention cutting back on ANYTHING to spoiled Western populations, they go mental. Just look at the reaction on Mumsnet every time someone suggests driving more fuel-efficient cars and using them less, or eating less red meat, or living in smaller houses... and these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the societal changes we have to make (and a lot of those are to the way we do business, not just lifestyles).

There is a book that is making waves by Professor Bill McGuire called Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. I don't think the evidence is totally watertight yet, and it's definitely not uncontroversial, but it seems like there may be a link.

[Lweji]

Linking fracking in Oklahoma to the ring of fire is pushing things WAY too far.


I didn't.

But, who's to say it isn't?
A small butterfly...

[Ta1kinPeece]

Lweji
I'm very familiar with Chaos theory
I also studied plate tectonics, plate structural faults and minor faults to degree level
I also regularly read scientific articles about geology, geomorphology and climate science.

Linking fracking in Oklahoma to the ring of fire is pushing things WAY too far.

Worry more about trying to mitigate climate change - that IS something we can have an impact on.

[Lweji]

It all adds up.

We don't really know. Small changes. Big effects. Are you familiar with chaos theory?

[Ta1kinPeece]

Lweji
But those fracking quakes are tiny - the chart in the second link shows them going up to magnitude 4

remember that its a logarithmic scale
5 is ten times bigger than 4 etc

The two in Mexico were 7.1 and 8.1 so the Mexico City one was 1,000 times bigger than anything ever experienced in Oklahoma.

THe Canada link says they were tiny and does not even give Richter numbers ....

[Lweji]

And yet...

mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/science/fracking-earthquakes-alberta-canada.html

thinkprogress.org/oklahoma-fracking-earthquakes-arent-over-403d464e35a8/

[Ta1kinPeece]

Lweji
I just spotted your comment about Fracking.

Fracking is an utter irrelevance.
Its nothing at all compared with tectonic plates or major structural faults.
eg
there has been fracking directly under Bournemouth, Poole, Sandbanks ( the most expensive property in the UK ) and Studland for 30 years
but no earthquakes have been noticed or happened ....

I am anti new fracking in the UK because of pollution / water issues
on a geological basis I do not care in the least

[Lweji]

There are many earthquakes where I live, but we can't feel most of them.

www.ipma.pt/en/geofisica/sismicidade/

(the map is probably biased because it's by a Portuguese agency, but still, loads)

[Braeburns]

As per previous posters mentioned we have loads of quakes in NZ. I live near where the recent one mentioned in UK news was and didn't feel it at all. I do find it strange it is getting so much coverage when as a country we currently have a major crisis due to our jet fuel pipeline being cut off!
www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake

[Ski4130]

We lived in NZ for 4 years, and EQs were a regular occurence. NZ is on the pacific ring of fire - volcanos, dodgy tectonic plates and an unstable land mass make for interesting times living there.

[Lweji]

we humans could/should be better at this sort of planning

It's more a Darwin thing.

We did survive an ice age, but genetic data suggests it was touch and go.

[InigoTaran]

Good article about the hurricanes here:

news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/hurricane-irma-harvey-season-climate-change-weather/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_tw20170921news-catastrophichurricanes&utm_campaign=Content&sf115654346=1

[lettuceWrap]

It's all a bit grim we humans could/should be better at this sort of planning- it's kind of IMPORTANT.

[GladAllOver]

When Krakatoa exploded in 1883 the dust clouds affected weather around the world. Temperatures were reduced in Europe and there was record rainfull in the US.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

and some of the plans look like they may be going a bit wrong:
www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/19/arctic-stronghold-of-worlds-seeds-flooded-after-permafrost-melts

[ComputerUserNotTrained]

There absolutely are people planning, but I'm not sure there are enough. DOD report on climate change

[TheNaze73]

These unfortunate natural disasters have been happening for millions of years.
However, I heard the world is going to end on Saturday, so you may be on to something

[lettuceWrap]

whoops, sorry! Human history is dotted with these sorts of catastrophic happenings- but we are still here.
We would probably be more able to work our way through it now, I hope anyway. Somebody's (high level somebody's), got to be planning for this sort of thing, unlike the last time we'd know what was happening and act to mitigate as many of the effects as possible.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/150410-tambora-volcano-eruption-climate-change-famine-earth-science/

[Lweji]

It's chaos out there.


It's a chaotic system, so sensitive to initial conditions and very difficult to predict.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

yeah, I wasn't offering it as a happy solution.

Laki had a profound impact on Europes weather in 1783.
www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/15/iceland-volcano-weather-french-revolution

[ComputerUserNotTrained]

And then Lettuce came along