Is it finally possible to predict earthquakes?

Good to hear this may happen in our not too distant future


Apologies,
I'm still not able to use the quote and link tags post properly as per the T&C


From the article:
"Predicting earthquakes was once thought to be impossible due to the difficulty of calculating the motion of rocky mantle flows. Such flows are caused by high temperatures inside the Earth, the hottest part of which is the iron core. This core heats the bottom of the rocky mantle, which causes it to move slowly in large streams.

But thanks to a new algorithm, we now know that it is possible to model these underground streams. While this may be of little solace to the thousands of people affected by the earthquake in Nepal last week, we hope that in the not-too-distant future scientists may be able to provide warnings for at least some similar events, helping to minimise loss of life and wider devastation.

At the Delft University of Technology, we are using an algorithm to create a digital model of the North Anatolian Fault, a major geological fault ..........."


"............ The computer-based model seeks to predict where the plates are running together the hardest, and thus where underground stresses are the greatest — an often tell-tale sign of where an earthquake might hit. To do this the model seeks to map underground patterns of activity in the Earth’s mantle across some 100m underground grid points.

The model predicts where these stress points will arise through simulating the flow of different rocky mantle flows. The temperature and pressure in the Earth mantle are so high that these rock flows are slow. In essence, the model can ascertain where, as a result of these flows, the plates are likely to run together, and automatically detect these stressed grid points."

Source: www.theguardian.com...

More:
"In practice, this means calculations of such flows involves the construction of very complex mathematical systems made up of millions of pressure and velocity values mapped around the underground grid points. This is a massive exercise and scaling it up – which involves computing over a large expanse of the Earth’s mantle – was previously too difficult.

Our algorithm, however, has allowed this scaling up to be achieved using the latest scientific methods and computing power. The model is more accurate and comprehensive, but the project’s complexity has been increased considerably.

While others working in the field do not dispute the model we are using there are always others would like to add more details, such as mapping a larger area or looking in even more granularity at factors like friction and viscosity. However, ever greater complexity involves ever more computing time."

It will be really interesting to see if they will be able to predict earthquakes with accuracy

Is it finally possible to predict quakes?

Not yet…

The computer-based model seeks to predict…

I know my baby is going to fart and hiccup, its happened before and it will happen again.

No super computer algorithm will pinpoint that, either.

The problem with finite predictions in case of natural disasters is in the history books. What typically happens is they announce some disaster is coming, like Mt. St. Helens for instance, and they evacuate everyone and seal the place off and then wait, tic… tic… tic, until everyone drops their guard, returns home and then… wham.

Animals are better than computers at predicting quakes.

a reply to: violet
Please let this be true.To be able to get an advanced warning out well before a quake hits to avoid all the deaths and injuries.I have always said this type of research should be funded at the highest degree.

a reply to: intrptr
Animals have a sense of when not only earthquakes but storms ,forest fires , almost all natural disasters are coming . I have often wondered if humans do as well and we just disregard it .

a reply to: violet

No doubt, this guy is certainly one of the eggheads who would be able to unravel the secrets hidden within seemingly random occurrences and tease out their mysteriously vague whispers.

And he's not alone, an older thread of mine entitled A Discussion on the Methodology of Earthquake Prediction shows an equally high level of science within this milieu from research orgs across the world.

a reply to: Gothmog

About the weather? During my "outdoors" phase, I learned to predict the weather. When you are out in it all the time you are closer to the environment and more familiar with it. So are animals.

With quakes, they detect the pre shocks, the tiny little vibrations preceding a big one. Probably because they are 'stiller' whereas we are always in motion. Even at rest our minds wander. Animals have more focus, more presence of mind. (And four feet in direct contact with the ground).

originally posted by: Gothmog
a reply to: violet
Please let this be true.To be able to get an advanced warning out well before a quake hits to avoid all the deaths and injuries.I have always said this type of research should be funded at the highest degree.

Yes. I agree
I think it can be done once they work out how to do it right.

a reply to: intrptr
Animals definitely sense things long before we can. Makes sense what you say with "four feet on the ground".

I had a cat that kept jumping up on high furniture all of a sudden. He was doing this for days. It's like he didn't want to be on the floor. When he was on the floor he panicked and leapt up onto something high. Like on top of my fridge. Never did that before. He just about knocked the TV over trying to leap onto that. Then there was a quake in Seattle. We live in southern BC. A good three or four hour drive from Seattle. I think he knew it was coming and was feeling small vibrations or movement in the ground.

So I do think the ground is moving ever so slightly days in advance of a quake. Something less than foreshocks that might register on a seismograph. Animals pick up on this for sure.

a reply to: violet

So I do think the ground is moving ever so slightly days in advance of a quake. Something less than foreshocks that might register on a seismograph. Animals pick up on this for sure.

Google that for SF Bay Area and you get a guy (I forget his name) that used lost pet columns in newspapers to predict quakes back when. The "scientists" didn't like that approach because it was too simple. But he was right.

Pets get nervous before quakes and runaway or act strange.

They feel the tension, hear the subsonic 'shivers' of the earth. Its in their DNA? Plus they are still enough to sense it.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: violet

.

So I do think the ground is moving ever so slightly days in advance of a quake. Something less than foreshocks that might register on a seismograph. Animals pick up on this for sure.

Google that for SF Bay Area and you get a guy (I forget his name) that used lost pet columns in newspapers to predict quakes back when. The "scientists" didn't like that approach because it was too simple. But he was right.

Pets get nervous before quakes and runaway or act strange.

They feel the tension, hear the subsonic 'shivers' of the earth. Its in their DNA? Plus they are still enough to sense it.

I recall that about quakes with animals running away

Just like the Indonesian tsunami few dead, if any, animals were found. They all sought higher ground.

It would be great if somehow, some way they could wear a collar that beeped at the seismic stations, and if many were going off , it means there's a quake about to happen. Not sure how that could be done though. Maybe if they are running away, it could be a GPS tracking device that indicates many have fled their general location. My cat was just trying to elevate himself. I'm sure citizens would agree to be given one of these collars to use, or pay a small fee to work together with our pets or livestock. People would volunteer to be part of this test as well. I would! I live on the west coast.



Or even if classified ads at newspapers submitted information when they have more than usual lost pets being reported.

More about animals sensing earthquakes:

"(CNN)Rats deserting a city before a devastating earthquake may be the stuff of folklore, but scientists believe that animals really could hold the key to a quake early warning system.

Reports of pets vanishing or wildlife disappearing ahead of large earthquakes had previously been anecdotal, but an international study has for the first time documented changes in wild animal behavior before a seismic event.

Motion-triggered cameras
Using motion-triggered cameras located in the Yanachaga National Park in Peru, scientists found significant changes in animal behavior more than three weeks before a magnitude 7 earthquake struck the region in 2011.

On a typical day the cameras recorded 5 to 15 animal sightings, but within the 23-day period in the run-up to the earthquake, they recorded five or fewer sightings.

For the five to seven days immediately before the earthquake, no animal movements were recorded at all -- an unusual phenomenon in a mountainous rainforest region normally teeming with wildlife"

Positive ions
Dr Rachel Grant, lecturer in animal and environmental biology at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, told CNN the study is looking at the possibility that positive ions in the air -- generated in large numbers when rocks below the surface are stressed in the build-up to an earthquake -- may hold the key to the animals' behavior.

Serotonin syndrome
The imbalance related to positive ions is known as "serotonin syndrome," after the hormone that regulates mood.

"People can get headaches, nausea, anxiety and restlessness. We think the animals are moving away from this concentrated source of positive ions.

"Animals, in general, will move away from unpleasant stimuli."

She said that positive ions tend to collect in hilltops and that it was possible the animals were moving to lower ground to get away from them."
Source:www.cnn.com...

The .international study of animal behaviour:

"During earthquake preparation geophysical processes occur over varying temporal and spatial scales, some leaving their mark on the surface environment, on various biota, and even affecting the ionosphere. Reports on pre-seismic changes in animal behaviour have been greeted with scepticism by the scientific community due to the necessarily anecdotal nature of much of the evidence and a lack of consensus over possible causal mechanisms. Here we present records of changes in the abundance of mammals and birds obtained over a 30 day period by motion-triggered cameras at the Yanachaga National Park, Peru, prior to the 2011 magnitude 7.0 Contamana earthquake. In addition we report on ionospheric perturbations derived from night-time very low frequency (VLF) phase data along a propagation paths passing over the epicentral region. Animal activity declined significantly over a 3-week period prior to the earthquake compared to periods of low seismic activity. Night-time ionospheric phase perturbations of the VLF signals above the epicentral area, fluctuating over the course of a few minutes, were observed, starting 2 weeks before the earthquake. The concurrent observation of two widely different and seemingly unconnected precursory phenomena is of interest because recently, it has been proposed that the multitude of reported pre-earthquake phenomena may arise from a single underlying physical process: the stress-activation of highly mobile electronic charge carriers in the Earth’s crust and their flow to the Earth’s surface. The flow of charge carriers through the rock column constitutes an electric current, which is expected to fluctuate and thereby emit electromagnetic radiation in the ultralow frequency (ULF) regime. The arrival of the charge carriers can lead to air ionization at the ground-to-air interface and the injection of massive amounts of positive airborne ions, known to be aversive to animals"

Source:www.sciencedirect.com...

a reply to: violet

as well as other ways of creating art from the natural landscape

I think he also did research directed at counting up the number of animals that became roadkill. That included wild animals who also would migrate if they thought the area was dangerous. It was hard, though. Road crews who cleanup that stuff weren't monitoring and nobody was funding him or a study that didn't involve hi tech instruments.

After all, seismology requires a degree and millions of dollars to get right (which they haven't yet, lol).

I think they're dreaming. How are they going to model the effect of deep water and gas pockets, different states of magma solidity, all the different minerals and ores, as well as varying degrees of rock fracture and composition to be able to calculate stress buildups at 50 km deep in the first place? Damn near impossible. They are going to have to make a lot of assumptions. And you know what they say about assumptions. There are better places to spend that research money, imo.

Even if they knew, would they tell us?

Can you imagine if they said a 9+ was going to hit California in the next week? Everything would shut down. People would lose their minds.

I dug up this thread from a few months ago through searching, because I was curious.
I recall also seeing other mentions of this in various earthquake threads here.

Last night, my dog was being really annoying in the middle of the night, pacing and whining and scratching on my bedroom rug and jumping up and down from the floor to my bed and back again. She kept me awake.

She does get a little nervous during storms, but the sky was clear last night, and her behavior seemed extreme.

This morning I read that there was a 2.5 earthquake at 3:41 AM, with the epicenter about 43 miles from where I live. That is not a big earthquake, but on the East Coast we tend to feel smaller earthquakes for a greater distance. I did not feel anything, but I wonder if my dog did. Her strange behavior started earlier than the quake, which I know because I was looking at the clock when she was keeping me awake. So, perhaps she felt it coming.

Of course, if she acts like this again on a clear night, I might worry a little!