reply to post by Gexi1992
Welcome to ATS, even if slightly belatedly.
We're 227 days into the year and have had 1805 Earthquakes. 227 / 1805 = 8 Earthquakes every day, magnitude of above 5.
I have explained on the QuakeWatch thread that Japan, the area that has been creating a large number of earthquakes, is actually normally quite quiet.
Looking just at mag 6 quakes for example there have been 140 or so this year. About 70 of those were in the Honshu region. Prior to this year that
area only had 3 mag 6 in 2 years so if you remove the 70 from the figures you get 70 left over 7 months which means 120 by the end of the year, if it
continued at the same rate. There were 143 last year, but there 178 in 2007 and 168 in 2008. Actually in terms of numbers 1995 was the highest count
of earthquakes 5+ in the last decade + 2 years (2000 to now) You can apply the same calculation to mag 7 as well and it will work out fewer this
year.
Most of thes figures you will find
here in my 2010 analysis (now very
slightly out of date).
But
do numbers actually matter? Not really. Take the Chile
quake in 1960 - a mag 9.5 Mw. Japan was so much smaller that it would actually take over 700 magnitude 7.5 earthquakes to make up the difference in
energy.
This is actually calculated in Megatons of TNT as I am in the middle of doing a presentation of megaquakes
9.5 = 2,681.7 mTons TNT
9.1 = 673.6 mTons TNT
Diff = 2,008 mTons
7.5 = 2.7 mTons TNT
Divide 2008 by 2.7 = 749.
If you start at the op of
page 190 in quakewatch you will find quite a lot of
information about earthquake number and energy release.
I believe it is very unlikely that 2011 will have the most earthquakes or the most energy release ever, It might manage the most energy release in the
decade, but that is about it. Bear in mind that energy release is completely dwarfed by 1960
This is mag 7,8 and 9 earthquake counts and energy from 1900 to end July.
A Major Earthquake in North America Imminent
Berkland is a scaremonger and his Cascadia prediction for the last super moon was an epic fail.
As far as beaches go I do not know this particular one, but this type of thing is quite common.
Do you believe this Earthquake activity is normal?
Within normal margins yes, I do.
edit on 15/8/2011 by PuterMan because: missing words, bad spelling - the usual stuff!
