Sunday, May 03, 2015

A Global Surge of Great Earthquakes from 2004-2014. Does global warming play a part?

An increase in earthquakes was predicted because of the melting of ice caps and glaciers releasing pressure.

http://www.geosociety.org/news/pr/2014/14-76.htm

The Geological Society of America
GSA Release No. 14-76
Oct. 20, 2014

The last ten years have been a remarkable time for great earthquakes. Since December 2004 there have been no less than 18 quakes of Mw8.0 or greater – a rate of more than twice that seen from 1900 to mid-2004. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and massive damage has resulted from these great earthquakes. But as devastating as such events can be, these recent great quakes have come with a silver lining: They coincide with unprecedented advances in technological and scientific capacity for learning from them.

“We previously had very limited information about how ruptures grow into great earthquakes and interact with regions around them,” said seismologist Thorne Lay of the University of California at Santa Cruz. “So we are using the recorded data for these recent events to guide our understanding of future earthquakes. We've gained a new level of appreciation for how one earthquake can influence events in other zones.”

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