Earthquake Prediction Months In Advance 297
eegad writes "A UCLA seismologist named Vladimir Keilis-Borok claims earthquakes can be predicted months in advance. In the article at the University of California Newswire, he claims that the "team including experts of pattern recognition, geodynamics, seismology, chaos theory, statistical physics and public safety ... has developed algorithms to detect precursory earthquake patterns." It also says "the team's current predictions have not missed any earthquake, and have had its two most recent ones come to pass." They predict "an earthquake of at least magnitude 6.4 by Sept. 5, 2004, in a region that includes the southeastern portion of the Mojave Desert, and an area south of it." We'll see if they're right."
USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:2, Informative)
Incidentally, I'm posting this because I want to test the load bearing of this server, one of the ones I take care of here at work. So click away.
(anon to avoid karma-whoring)
PBS (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone heard of Kushida in Japan? (Score:5, Informative)
they've been making these predictions 20 years (Score:5, Informative)
The method may work, but it has not yet passed the scientifically required of repoducibility by scientists outside the Russian research group. Several leading US seismologists have tried reproducing this analysis method without success. Either the method is devilishly difficult to reporduce, important details have [perhaps intentionally] not been published, or it really doesn't work. Furthemore, you dont see the US results in press, because people generally dont publish negative results. Hopefully the reproducibility issues will be resolved and there will be a successful prediction method.
(Read my lips: cold fusion)
the most important prediction method (Score:5, Informative)
The United States Geological Survey has spent a lot of effort [usgs.gov] predicting maximum forces. this is based on the location of previous large earthquakes and local soil conditions among other factors. This has resulting in relatively low death rates of quakes of similar size. For example last month's central California quake and Iranian quakes were about the same size with death tolls of 3 and 30,000. Ditto 1994 Northridge and 1995 Kobe Japan with tolls of 55 and 6,000.
Re:So that means... (Score:3, Informative)
Dec. 26, 2003: Southeastern Iran, magnitude 6.5; at least 20,000 killed.
June 22, 2002: Northwestern Iran, magnitude 6; at least 500 killed.
May 10, 1997: Northern Iran, magnitude 7.1; 1,500 killed.
June 21, 1990: Northwest Iran, magnitude 7.3-7.7; 50,000 killed.
Sept. 16, 1978: Northeast Iran, magnitude 7.7; 25,000 killed.
need to be like bad weather predictions (Score:3, Informative)
An earthquake prediction is considered successful in the scientific sense if it beats background chance. (Backround chance is computed by counting space-time windows through seismic catalogs). Earthquakes are so rare, e.g. large ones in tens of thousnds of days in California, that large space-time window can beat chance. However, no one has published a reproducable methods for general earthquake prediction (ecuding aftershocks, maximum force, etc) that has eat chance.
Re:Where is said prediction? / Why it can't work (Score:1, Informative)
Keilis-Borok's team now predicts an earthquake of at least magnitude 6.4 by Sept. 5, 2004, in a region that includes the southeastern portion of the Mojave Desert, and an area south of it.
Re:PBS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:5, Informative)
Reasonably flexible and GPL'd.
Re:There's been other studies (Score:2, Informative)
Earthquake alarm systems (Score:3, Informative)
The traditional alarm methods listen to several stations in order to block out non-earthquake events and triangulate the location. But this takes 2-5 minutes waiting for enough information. Some research is going towards single-station, first couple second analysis, which may be useful for Los Angeles.
Re:USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:4, Informative)
My university had the complete USGS survey book, the big thick one with maps of everything anyone ever tracked, from climate to weeds. (Wonderful resource, that book.) I remember the earthquake details as compiled up thru 1958, and that if you want a quake-free location, the closest to that is North Dakota (only 3.n magnitude or less on the map). And it's amazing how many major metro areas are planted directly atop historical large-quake clusters.
Re:Richter scale... (Score:5, Informative)
Using the Mercalli scale is much more difficult, as it is not quantitative. Mercalli intensity is a qualitative description of the amount of shaking felt and the amount of property destruction. Plus, Mercalli intensity is not a single value, but rather may be different at every location. Nevertheless, the USGS has been working on a product called ShakeMap that can estimate Mercalli intensity within a few minutes of a quake. However, constructing these maps requires extensive local seismic networks. For an example of a ShakeMap, see this link [usgs.gov].
Predicting the shaking from a given quake (e.g. mag. 7 and 15 km depth in a particular location) before the fact for planning purposes is also done. Small variations in the earthquake parameters (location, direction of slip, depth, etc.) may significantly affect the shaking felt at a given location. Local geology also has a big effect on the amount of shaking experienced. So, it's a tough problem that requires lots of data.