Wednesday, April 21, 2010

2010 - the year of the earthquakes, 27 large earthquakes already - where next?

Haiti, Chile, Iceland, Turkey, Tibet, California, China... the list goes on. One thing for sure is that the earth has been very active this year. It is highly unusual for so many strong earthquakes to occur close together in such a short period. This means a record pace of 27 large earthquakes already in 2010!

A very worrying side effect of more frequent and  larger earthquakes (those over Richter scale of 7.0) is that they kick start many dormant volcanoes worldwide (see below video). We are already seeing this impact with the volcano in Iceland and the one in vanuatu at the moment

Scientists are concerned and  are trying to work out what is causing this unusal increase and earthquake  activity. Conspiracy theorists speculate possible causes such as HAARP, the solar theory (like from the 2012 movie) and planetary influences.

Just this week, there is renewed concern about future earthquakes in california with the USGS detecting increased seismic activity in the area. There is debate  that a large earthquake may initiate a volcano at Yellow stone national park.

Earthquakes are making the news worldwide on a daily basis. Heres just a few recent headlines...

LOS ANGELES: Seismologists are unable to explain a marked recent increase in earthquake activity in Southern California.
There have been 70 quakes greater than magnitude 4.0 in Southern California and Baja California so far this year, the most of any year in the past decade. There were 30 last year and 29 in 2008.
The string of quakes this year raises the possibility that Southern California might again be entering a more active seismic period. Scientists said the increase did not mean the Big One was imminent, but it could mean more quakes were on the way.
Egill Hauksson, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, said the rate of quakes in the region was ''probably … picking up again'' after a relative lull that lasted more than 10 years.
''What it means is that we are going to have more earthquakes than in the average year. With more earthquakes, we're bound to have more bigger ones. But there are always fewer of those than the smaller ones.''
Scientists, however, have not been able to identify reasons that fully explain the increase. source

Perth Australia - The biggest earthquake in 50 years struck Western Australia's Goldfields region on Tuesday, damaging buildings and closing the massive "Super Pit" gold mine, officials said. (Interesting to note as Australia is not near any fault / plate lines.)

Utah-  the recent Utah Earthquake is reported to be the biggest within 75 years in the area.

China: Earthquake in Qinghai: 2039 dead. Tomorrow national day of mourning

Vanuatu- another volcano causes plans for mass evacuation. This time it’s the turn of the Southern Hemisphere and Volcano Gaua:
Preparations are being made to evacuate nearly 3,000 people from the Vanuatu island of Gaua after further threats from its volcano. The Gaua volcano in Torba province began erupting seven months ago and there has been renewed activity in recent weeks. A Department of Internal Affairs meeting last Thursday concluded there was no alternative to evacuating the people of Gaua to Sola on Vanualava island. More

The Volcano in Iceland and the ash cloud over Europe - The last Icelandic Earthquake eruption lasted for two years in 1823. History books talk about several time getting clouds of dust in Europe and Iceland.

Cause for concern? - Large Earthquakes start-off volcanoes worldwide:
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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

USGS is saying that the seeming increase in vulcanism is not really an increase. See...

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2439&from=news_side

Push Back said...

About this. What would happen if say 5 volcanos were to erupt different parts of the world and spew ash for a month?

Anonymous said...

i am living in thailand

and we also had an earthquake here...

in the chiang rai region about 3-5 on the ricter scale..

in anycase. thailands not known for earthquakes so its a bit weird

Jeff said...

Where did you get the number 27 from? Assuming by "large" you mean 7.0 or greater, there's been only 6 of those this year world-wide. The average since 1900 is 16, so we're only slightly higher than average. Check out the following link - you can see that recent trends are not out of the norm. What you can say is that more large earthquakes have happened around populated areas - as you can see from the worldwide chart, that number is going to be crazily high this year if the trend continues.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php

Anonymous said...

Are UFO's causing these? If not, why all the posts?

Willie Creek Pearls said...

remember the anomalies over laverton that was suspected of being haarp activity?? It was seen on the meteorology site and posted on here. Then we have a quake about 2 months later in the middle of western australia right near laverton!!!! just a coincidence, i think not, wake up people, they will never tell you the truth on the us geo site or any media site! Wake up and smell the beans a quake in afghan?? Its pretty obvious whats going on here, but the sheep keep soakin it up!

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