Can you predict the magnitude of an earthquake

The jagged boundary edges of these plates get stuck, while the rest of the plate continues to move, storing up energy along the plate boundary in the process. These waves shake the ground as they move through it, and an earthquake occurs. An effective earthquake prediction includes four components: the date, time, location, and magnitude of the expected quake.

To determine how a possible early warning sign or signs may translate into these four factors requires scientists to either look for patterns in earthquakes that have already occurred or create sophisticated mathematical models of the movement of known tectonic plates.

For the first case, scientists have attempted to link multiple natural factors that have preceded earthquakes in the past with the earthquake itself, including increased amounts of radon in local water sources, rising levels of ground water, changes in electromagnetic activity and even odd animal behavior.

For example, before the main rupture that ultimately causes a quake, smaller breaks called micro-fissures will form in subsurface rock. The more permeable rock might then lead to changes in ground water levels. This same change in permeability could also lead to the escape of radon which forms by radioactive decay of elements in certain minerals.

However, even if scientists can draw geological connections between these changes in nature and earthquakes, there has been very little evidence that one must occur with the other. Sometimes these events occur without an ensuing earthquake, and other times earthquakes occur without any of these precursor events.

Without empirical evidence linking certain possible warning signs to earthquakes, scientists can instead attempt to model specific fault lines. Such conditions are challenging to recreate in the lab, and although geologists have drilled boreholes in the San Andreas Fault Zone to study the conditions there, such efforts are expensive and not easy. Another difficulty in earthquake prediction is that small earthquakes, those that register here on the surface only slightly or not at all, and larger earthquakes are thought to start the same way despite ultimately having different strengths and durations.

Earthquake forecasts provide information on the likelihood of earthquakes over a shorter time window of time. Forecasts are used typically to describe aftershocks , which tend to follow a pattern of decreasing frequency and magnitude over time after an earthquake. Share this. What is an earthquake probability and how is it calculated? For example, seismologists estimate the number of years it could take to experience an earthquake of a certain magnitude by accounting for two processes: the buildup of strain onto faults as a result of the continual motion of tectonic plates, and the relieving of strain as a result of fault slip, which can occur as an earthquake or as slow creep along a fault line without an earthquake.

The fact that many large earthquakes do have foreshocks indicates that something unusual is happening before these large events.

With further research we may one day be able to make improved predictions of earthquakes. Privacy Statement Disclaimer and Copyright. Staff Search. Earthquakes Earthquakes at a Plate Boundary. New Zealands Largest Fault. Earthquakes and Faults. New Zealand Earthquakes. Major Faults in New Zealand. Monitoring Earthquakes. Seismic Activity. Ground Deformation.