-By 2014, the number of major earthquakes has doubled and scientists do not know why- *************************** -If you think there has been more earthquakes than usual you are right. A new study has shown that there were two times more of large earthquakes in the first quarter of 2014 than the average since 1979. We have recently experienced a period that has seen one of the highest rates of large earthquakes ever recorded, said Tom Parsons, the lead author of the study, a researcher in geophysics from the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park, California. -But even if the global earthquake rate is on the rise, it may still be explained by chance, said Parsons and his co-author Eric Geist, also a research scientist at the USGS. Their results were published online June 21 in the journal **Geophysical Research Letters. -With so many earthquakes that shake the planet in 2014, Parsons hoped that he could demonstrate that their increase had caused another big earthquake. -Previous research showed that seismic waves from an earthquake can travel around the globe and trigger small tremors elsewhere. -While our group is interested in the capacity of an earthquake to raise others around the world, we wondered if it was not what was happening. I really expected to see evidence of something that we could not explain by chance, said Parsons. -With this new study, this is not the first time that researchers have tried unsuccessfully to establish a connection between an earthquake and another more far in time and space. Previous studies have shown that the largest earthquakes in the world - those of magnitude 8 and 9 - typically raise a lot of shaking smaller magnitude 2 and 3. However, nobody has never proven that large earthquakes could trigger others. Find a statistical relationship between major earthquakes is a step towards the proof that such connections exist. -But the new study showed that despite the recent flood of earthquakes, they always seem to strike randomly. -The average rate of large earthquakes - those of magnitude greater than 7 - was 10 per year since 1979, the study reported. This rate is increased to 12.5 per year beginning in 1992, and then climbed to 16.7 per year from 2010 - an increase of 65 percent over the rate since 1979 this increase accelerated in the first three months of 2014 to reach more than double the average since 1979. **************************** **Geophysical Research Letters. onlinelibrary.wiley/doi/10.1002/2014GL060513/abstract **************************** -10/22/2014 -- GLOBAL SURGE of Earthquakes confirmed by Professionals- youtu.be/s2vxIOoklzc
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 09:30:41 +0000