No Rise in Earthquakes
Massive earthquakes are no more likely today than they were a century ago, despite an apparent rise in recent years of the devastating temblors, US researchers said on Monday.
The deadly 9.0 earthquake this year in Japan, an 8.8 quake in Chile last year and the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake that registered 9.0 on the moment magnitude scale have raised alarm in some science and media circles that such events may be linked.
But researchers at the University of California went back over the world’s earthquake records dating back to 1900 and found over time there was no statistically significant rise in the number of big quakes, 7.0 and higher.
“One has to be careful, because humans have a tendency to see patterns in random sequences,” lead author Peter Shearer of the UC Berkeley Department of Statistics told AFP.
…Even though there is “a disproportionate number of very large 8.5 earthquakes between 1950 and 1965,” there were uncommonly fewer of these during a much longer period afterward from 1965 to 2004, said the study.
And although there has been an higher rate of 8.0 and higher quakes since 2004, with the last five years in particular at a record high, “there have been rates nearly as high in the past,” it said.
This confirms my own research. It’s not hard to work out if you understand statistics. However, a few more big quakes now could indicate a trend towards more big ones.
And while some 2012 “experts” will claim that an apparent increase in earth changes indicates a coming catastrophe, I feel the big one will come out of the blue, with no warnings except for perhaps animals going mental in the preceding hours.
