Indonesia May Face a “Supercycle” of Devastating Earthquakes

Someone posted this in a earthquake omgtheearthisending thread and I thought it was interesting enough to have its own thread:

Pretty interesting considering it's from late 2008, and the recent Sumatra earthquakes the past few days:

While Indonesia is still rebuilding following the devastating 2004 earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 130,000 people on the island of Sumatra alone, scientists are warning that several other major earthquakes are likely to occur in the region over the next decades. A new study examined the growth records of coral reefs off the coast of Sumatra, and say they show evidence of repeated bursts of earthquakes that relieve pressure on the Sunda fault. A shock in 2007 may be the beginning of a new cycle, researchers say.

Instead, the growth patterns indicate that each cycle involves a few major earthquakes that occur over the course of several decades, in what study coauthor Aron Meltzner calls a “supercycle.” The 2007 quake originated in the southern region of the Sundra fault near the Mentawai Islands just south of Sumatra, a stretch of the fault that had been seismically calm since major quakes struck the region in 1797 and 1833, Meltzner notes…. Meltzner and his colleagues suggest that the Mentawai Islands’ September 2007 temblor is the opening salvo in a new supercycle of quakes for the region

Maybe the HAARP people went back in time to cover their tracks and placed this news article there to confuse us!

blogs.discovermagazine.com...

Well I am not a scientist and I predict that Japan will have more big earthquakes in the future. I too believe that the "cycle" started for Japan on 3-11-11. Point being it does not take a scientist to confirm that these places will experience big earthquakes, they are after all known as seismic areas right?

Originally posted by AllUrChips
Well I am not a scientist and I predict that Japan will have more big earthquakes in the future. I too believe that the "cycle" started for Japan on 3-11-11. Point being it does not take a scientist to confirm that these places will experience big earthquakes, they are after all known as seismic areas right?

They are making their analysis based on data they have uncovered showing this particular region experiences these kinds of bursts in larger quakes. Conventional wisdom has general been that these larger quakes are not so common, but what they are seeing is this specific area goes through cycles of several large quakes in a relatively short period of time.

Of course, if you actually read the linked article, and not just the headline you would know all that...

Better luck next time

Actually I dont need to read an article from 2007 to know the are is very seismically active. Thread fail bro, sorry.

reply to post by stanguilles7


Heres an article from waaaayyyyyyyy back in the year (blows dust off) ninteen hundred and nintey five!!!!! Even in 2007 it was not breaking news, sorry, better luck next timewww.bssaonline.org...

Originally posted by AllUrChips
Actually I dont need to read an article from 2007 to know the are is very seismically active. Thread fail bro, sorry.

Hey, that's great! I'm glad you don't need to take the time to read articles but can take the time to compose such great comments like 'thread fail, bro'.

Have a great day!

Originally posted by AllUrChips
reply to post by stanguilles7

 

Heres an article from waaaayyyyyyyy back in the year ninteen hundred and nintey five!!!!! Even in 2007 it was not breaking news, sorry, better luck next time

www.bssaonline.org...

That's a neat synopsis. It shows that they have been looking at this being a likelihood for a while, and this latest article is just one more piece of evidence to support the theory. Interesting. Thanks.

I'm not sure why you think I am pretending this is 'breaking news', or who ran over your puppy today, but I hope everything goes back to normal so you can stop trolling threads.

Click here for more information.

from daily activity,

it looks like they have joined the Japan bandwagon

of 6 mag quakes recurrently

reply to post by AllUrChips


just as well, you were making yourself look like a right tit

op interesting, definitely looks like they were right, seems to be playing out right now.

reply to post by doubledutch


Um..... if you consider PROVING that I was right, making myself look like a right tit? ON TOPIC: so tell me, what more facts do you need me to break out. This area is and has ALWAYS been very seismically active, period.

Originally posted by AllUrChips
This area is and has ALWAYS been very seismically active, period.

edit on 16-4-2012 by AllUrChips because: (no reason given)

It's fascinating how tenacious you are in your quest to determine this article is saying something different. Of course, if you took the time to actually read the article, you would see it is not saying anything different from what you are saying: this is a natural cycle, and they have uncovered even more evidence allowing them to better document this cycle. All very interesting.


For example, if you had READ THE ARTICLE, you would have seen this, which is obviously entirely consistent with your own claims:

“If previous cycles are a reliable guide we can expect one or more very large west Sumatran earthquakes … within the next two decades”

or this:

"researchers looked at the growth patterns of coral reefs in the region over the past 700 years. When a quake occurs the seafloor rises up, effectively lowering the sea level so that shallow coral reefs are now above the surface. The reefs can’t grow upward, but their still submerged portions grow outward "

Or this:

"the growth patterns indicate that each cycle involves a few major earthquakes that occur over the course of several decades, in what study coauthor Aron Meltzner calls a “supercycle.”

So, sorry to disappoint, Don Quixte, but the dragons you are battling are not there

Take care.

Originally posted by AllUrChips
Actually I dont need to read an article from 2007 to know the are is very seismically active. Thread fail bro, sorry.

Well, if you DID read the article, you would see its saying the same thing. With evidence. Imagine That!

okay, well just remove the thread then.

The troll won.

reply to post by stanguilles7


Great thread!

At some point in the past year I have read something about the clustering of major (M8+) quakes in the Pacific, and while I can't find specifically what it was I was reading, I did manage to dig up the following:

Superquakes and Supercycles

The recent Mw=9 superquake off Tohoku Japan, and the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman superquake have humbled many in earthquake research. Neither region was thought capable of earthquakes of magnitudes exceeding Mw~8.4 based on historical records and theories relating magnitude, plate age, convergence rate sediment cover and plate coupling. We note several examples that bear on this problem.

...

To examine long term cycling of kinetic energy, we scale turbidite mass (energy release) to balance plate convergence (energy gain) to generate a 10ka energy time series for Cascadia. A robust pattern is observed, and includes long term increases and declines in stored “energy state” which we term “supercycles”. If Cascadia is representative, this suggests that recurrence models may be neither time nor slip predictable and cannot be based on short instrumental records.

As this paper mentions the Great Tohoku Quake of 2011, it would seem as though this brief is referencing the same cycles mentioned in the 2008 paper in the blog post you linked.

Another article of note is this:

TOTALLY PSYCHED FOR THE FULL-RIP NINE

In science as in daily life, not everyone agrees:

Coincidence? Or significant cluster? Some geologists, including Tom Parsons, a U.S. Geo­­logical Survey (USGS) geophysicist at the ­Pacific Coastal and Marine Sciences Center in Menlo Park, California, say it was chance. “Based on the evidence we’ve seen,” he says, “we don’t think that large, global earth­­quake clusters are any­thing more than ­coincidence.”

How far does coincidence fly here at ATS?

But Mr. Parsons is but one of thousands of scientists that study this field (seismology) and of course there are dissenting opinions.

Parsons’s study didn’t settle the question. Far from it, in fact. “Make no doubt about it: we’re in the middle of a global cluster of megaquakes,” says Chris Goldfinger, director of the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Lab at Oregon State University. “Every­body’s noticed it. There are seismologists who say it’s not statistically significant. But it’s happening. The reason it’s downplayed is that nobody’s figured out a mechanism—how and why they’re happening now.”

Goldfinger is no fringe scientist, and what’s especially troubling is that this sort of clus­ter­ing has been seen before. Six of the world’s 16 largest recorded2 megaquakes happened between 1952 and 1964. More worrying, all six of the ’52–’64 cluster megaquakes ­occurred around the infamous Ring of Fire, the volcano-dotted arc that traces the edge of the Pacific plate. Of the remaining ten largest mega­quakes, five have occurred since 2004. All five were along the Ring of Fire.

The above quoted passage is especially relevant in light of the recent coupled pair of M8+ quakes in Sumatra on April 11.

The article goes on to indicate that the recent trend in megaquakes has significant implications for eh Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ), and those implications are sobering for anyone who lives in that area.

No fearmongering here, just thinking of the very real danger posed by a fault zone which is known to generate ~M9 quakes in the past and is looked at to do so again in the future.



In case you have not seen them, here are two other threads of note:

Quake Watch 2012

West Coast USA: Pay Attention, Cascadia May Be Ready to Rupture