How To Predict Earthquakes Infallibly (Hint: You Won't Find It Here)

Actually, I can reverse-predict earthquakes. I can state unequivocally that no more big earthquakes are going to happen in the near future. Here's how I can say this: I have a seismometer in the department at Modesto Junior College. It's on all the time, and it will usually pick up magnitude 6 quakes from anywhere in the world, and pretty much any magnitude 4 quake around California. So when reports started coming in from around the planet that we had experienced a couple of large earthquakes, I was anxious to see what the records looked like on our unit.

I got to school yesterday and found that there had been a power outage, and I got nothing. No records at all. So I turned the unit back on and that's why I know the big quakes will stop. Now that the seismometer is operating within parameters, nothing is sure to happen.

You all seem skeptical! You think this doesn't work? It doesn't seem scientific? Well, I guess you are right.

But it IS at least as scientific as the irresponsible scribes across the media who have suddenly spawned dozens if not hundreds of articles noting the clustering of earthquake events and suggesting that California must be next. The BIG ONE IS COMING, they say. These stories are uninformed, and they do a lot of damage of the "Boy Who Cried Wolf" nature.

People are perfectly willing to use click-bait titles to get attention (heck, even I did just now, but I'm not selling anything). And they spread a great deal of misinformation, leaving people vulnerable and unprepared for when the big earthquakes actually happen.

So here is my brief message about infallibly predicting earthquakes: it can't be done, and anyone on the web who says they can is deceiving you. The best we can do is invest in the study of the active faults in our region, and develop probabilities like those seen on the map below. Trust the seismologists and geologists, and learn to think critically about earthquakes. And when you see otherwise responsible news media getting the story wrong, do your part to inform the reporters and news readers.

Do you want to learn more? There are lots of reliable places to look. Start with the U.S. Geological Survey, the California Geological Survey, the Southern California Earthquake Center, and the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.

http://www.conservation.ca.gov/CGS/rghm/psha/

A Look Back at Ten Years of Geotripping: Geotripper Emerges From the Apocalypse...

This week is my commemoration of ten years of geoblogging. I've been digging through the archives for some of my favorite posts of the last decade, and we've reached 2011. We had a series of epic trips that year, one with my students across the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains, and the other a personal journey across the Basin and Range, the central Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Plateau. They resulted in not one, but two blog series, A Convergence of Wonders, and Vagabonding Across the 39th Parallel. I would recommend the first if you want to know what adventures await if you attend a Modesto Junior College geology field studies course, and the second if you want to know what happens when you just up and leave on a two-week trip without a plan, and just a vague goal (Rocky Mountain National Park). Those of you who know me will understand how hard that can be, starting out a day not completely certain where one will end up that night.

But as fun as those series were for me to write, I picked three individual posts from 2011 as my favorites. One was utilitarian, one was about the adventure of being a geologist (or geology fan), and the third, my response to yet another irresponsible prediction about a giant earthquake or apocalypse or some other world-ending thing that got the web and cable news all excited. Of course the predicted date came and went with no unusual activity as they always do. Frankly, I sort of lost it. That blogpost is below. The other two are coming shortly...enjoy!


From March 24, 2011: 

Welcome, survivors of the Apocalypse! Like you, I have been hiding in my underground bunker, safe from the radiation cloud and protected from the supermoon and giant earthquake that caused California to plunge into the sea. I'm waiting to see if my investment in oceanfront property on the Carrizo Plains has paid off with a nice seaside view. Did any of the southern California mountains remain as offshore islands? I was sort of hoping to have a few on the horizon. I've been rationing my Cheetos, Pringles and beef jerky. I lined my bunker with lots and lots of tin foil to protect myself from the electronic emanations of those pointy-headed "scientists" who kept poo-pooing the predictions of those who sensed the coming Apocalypse in their minds and mathematical calculations. As soon as I saw the work of the prophets on the Internet I knew it had to be true. Their prophecies were aired by the cable news networks, so I double-knew it had to be true. I didn't feel the earthquake because I built my shelter on a spring-loaded foundation. Was it really shaky? My clock broke, so I've been estimating the number of days I've been in hiding by making chalk marks on the wall; it's 2012 isn't it? The Mayan calendar came to an end and all? Have the Zombies died out yet?

Well, that's that. The supermoon weekend passed and California is still here. The full moon didn't scrape along the ground and erase cities. There were no tidal disruptions. There was no earthquake. There were no volcanic eruptions. No one melted from the radiation cloud. The prophets and predictors were wrong, yet again, wrong again for the umpteenth time. Over and over they are wrong. Hundreds of times they have been wrong. And still they find a stage on the cable news networks, the Internet, the radio...over and over. There always seems to be a crowd of uninformed and misinformed people who take them seriously, and there are uninformed and misinformed news readers who are unable to critically assess their irresponsible claims. At the same time they dismiss the statements and findings of academics who have given over their lives to the study and understanding of the earth sciences. And in the end the charlatans and fakes are never brought to account for scaring people and causing economic disruptions.

I've seen enough of "judgment journalism" in politics to know that cable news outlets are capable of shaming those who cross the line of honesty and decency. They are capable of using their media platform to upbraid and criticize officials who steal money or engage in hypocritical behaviour. Why are they not criticizing and shaming those who carelessly predicted earthquakes and radiation poisoning without regard to the consequences of being totally (and predictably) wrong? I have never seen the news readers take a self-proclaimed "psychic" to task for their hundreds of wrong predictions.

Wouldn't it be nice just once to see a camera crew waiting outside the home of one of those self-proclaimed psychics or would-be earthquake prophets and ask them over and over why they made yet another wrong claim that needlessly scared people? Just once to hear them told to their face that they are charlatans and fakes? How long will the con artists persist when they know they will be subjected to public derision when they make their spurious claims?

In the meantime, the media outlets need to learn the real facts about the possibilities of quakes and other hazards in California (and anywhere else) and make sure their audiences know the actual magnitude of the threat. The faults are here after all, and there is a lot of built-up stress. Damaging quakes will happen, and we need to all be as prepared as possible. The first thing to do is to arm yourself with knowledge. Get this knowledge from responsible government agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey, or the California Geological Survey, or academic organizations like the Southern California Earthquake Center. Then you make the appropriate preparations: keep emergency supplies of water, flashlights, radios, batteries, and first aid kits, both in your home, and in your car. Have a family plan for what to do when disaster strikes.

By the way, it is ok to have Pringles and Cheetos in your emergency supplies...but put some healthy stuff in there too. There is junk food and there is junk news. Too much of either can be harmful to your health.

The Rim of Fire and the "Impending" Mega-Earthquakes: Look past the inflammatory headlines

Every few years (or months) there is a flurry of activity, and everyone gets hot and bothered and worried that the world is about to come apart. There's concern, even panic, and then things settle down a bit and the subject gets forgotten for another couple of years (or months).

Oh, you thought I was talking about earthquakes? No, I was talking about media storm ABOUT earthquakes. There have been a couple of bad earthquakes this week, truly tragic events, including the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Ecuador that has killed hundreds of people. There were smaller, but still deadly events in Japan. As a result, stories are making the rounds in the media concerning the Ring of Fire, and the possibility of an impending mega-earthquake...somewhere. Some other place is about to get it, the stories suggest.

Is there something strange going on? Are these earthquakes omens of future events? The answers: no, and probably no. The problem in the media treatment of earthquakes is that writers of these stories have a bit of knowledge, and a bit of knowledge can lead to problems. People have heard of the "Ring of Fire", and figure that it is a single geologic unit to the extent that if something happens somewhere along the Ring of Fire, it will have an immediate cause and effect on some other part of the Ring of Fire. It's a misconception.

Source: A. Hayes

Geologists use the term Ring of Fire as a convenience to describe a variety of different tectonic boundaries around and within the Pacific Ocean region. The trenches and subduction zones do not behave as a single coherent unit, and thus a large earthquake or volcanic eruption along one convergent boundary does not mean the impending destruction of another part of the "ring". The problem is that when a large event does take place, like the Ecuador event, then people suddenly pay attention to all the magnitude 6 earthquakes that take place within a few days or weeks and draw the conclusion that all of the events are related. They are almost assuredly not.

The problem is that magnitude 6 earthquakes are happening all the time, often in isolated regions, so they receive less attention on a day-to-day basis. But throw in a near-magnitude 8 event, and suddenly all the magnitude 6 events seem to be a frightening coincidence, and they feel related, as if one is causing the other.

Can earthquakes be an omen of a future event? Yes, they can. In the same way that a stick crackles and pops before it snaps in two, foreshocks can indeed be a harbinger of an impending quake. The foreshocks are not recognizable as such until the main quake happens (they're no different than run-of-the-mill earthquakes), so they can't be used to predict major quakes. But when they do occur, they are precursors to a larger quake in the same general area, along the same subduction zone.They are not predictors of quakes across oceans.

Mega-earthquakes (magnitude 8 or 9) may also set off earthquakes elsewhere, by triggering movement on faults that are already stressed to the breaking point. This isn't happening right now either. We haven't had a quake that big.

So, the take-away is this: could a gigantic earthquake, worse than the tragedies in Ecuador and Japan, take place, say, tomorrow? Sure. If it happens, is it related to these other events? Probably not. And media writers really need to put aside the temptation to put inflammatory click-bait titles on their reports about future mega-earthquakes. Panic and stress are not good combinations in earthquake country. Accurate information, on the other hand, will save lives.

A Geologist (also named Hayes) Sits Through "San Andreas", the Movie

What the heck is this? These are fault slickensides (scraping marks from fault motions) at Hoover Dam. Where the movie says there are no faults.

I love sitting through geology-based movies, so I can sit and smirk at the screen and criticize the horrible geology presented therein. And thus, I expected to do the same this afternoon, when I finally found time to catch "San Andreas". Mind you, there were plenty of geological issues with the movie, but I have to admit I actually enjoyed myself. It was entertaining. So here are some of the thoughts from another geologist named Hayes (the main geologist character in the movie was Lawrence Hayes. I'd feel complimented, but I noticed the movie's screenwriters, at least at some point, were also named Hayes. Plus, CalTech would never hire me).

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
Let's get the biggest spoiler out of the way first. Hoover Dam, Los Angeles, and San Francisco get destroyed in this movie. Strangely enough, Bakersfield gets nailed pretty badly too. The Hollywood sign and the Golden Gate Bridge get destroyed. If I was the maintenance guy for the Hollywood Sign, I'd be pretty tired of constantly replacing it by now.

Hoover Dam. It has its faults...

So, the opening scene as I recall involved a distracted young lady driving a mountain highway in the San Gabriel Mountains. A rock hits her windshield, and over the side she goes, at a rate of speed that defied the laws of gravity, and into a canyon so utterly steep that it defied gravity too. I grew up next to the San Gabriel Mountains, and yes, the mountains are steep, but yeesh. This was to establish our star as a superhero (Dwayne Johnson, aka "The Rock", doing better as a sensitive kind of guy than I would have expected).

Here's a steep canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains, but I don't think "The Rock" could fly a helicopter through it.

After the death-defying rescue, there was a lot of talking for awhile to establish the characters and bits of foreshadowing here and there. Estranged spouses, busy geologists, that kind of thing. I especially liked the poor professor very dramatically presenting the story of the worst earthquakes in history (this part was factually spot on, by the way), and then all his students waking up as the lights come back on in the classroom. One student asks ominously, "could it happen here?". What have they been studying all semester????

I get that a lot, too.

The geologists, who've worked as a team to try and predict earthquakes, predict earthquakes at Hoover Dam, and go there to investigate. Their little harmless quakes escalate quickly into a big quake, and the dam is destroyed. A couple of things: the geologists say there are no faults at Hoover Dam. The picture above is a fault at Hoover Dam. Actually, there are lots of faults at Hoover Dam. It might be more correct to say that faults there are not known to be active. Dams are known to reactivate dormant faults on occasion, due to water pressure along the fractures. Also, there was a variant of the movie trope of the black brother getting killed first. Paul Giamatti was the white guy geologist, and his associate was Asian. We immediately know he's doomed. By the way, Giamatti was pretty much my favorite character in the film. He always said very logical things, like "stop, drop and cover", and kept a cool demeanor all through the film. Oh, and laptop computers report the magnitude of earthquakes while they're still happening. It was then or later in the film that a grad student said something like "it just jumped from a 6.5 to an 8.5", again, right in the middle of the quake. It doesn't exactly happen that way. But I guess I'm being picky. Oh, and no one can predict earthquakes.

Well, almost nobody. These people predict earthquakes all the time (credit: Amanda).

The destruction of Hoover Dam showed the advances of thirty-five years of special effects technology. I liked the destruction of Hoover (or Glen Canyon) Dam in the original "Superman" movie with Christopher Reeves, but in "San Andreas" it was really something to see. I know they couldn't spend time on this kind of thing, but I sure would have liked to hear about the effects downstream on the Colorado River of having an entire year's flow happen in one day. It would have destroyed a string of dams all the way to Mexico, and flooded out of existence a number of towns. But that would have taken up an entire movie, and we had to get back to the destruction about to take place in California. Hoover was almost immediately forgotten.

An approximation of the remainder of the movie "San Andreas", courtesy of Amanda

So, for the rest of the movie, we see Los Angeles get devastated by the worst earthquake in west coast history, a 9.1 or so (no, it can't happen). Geologist realizes that it is only a precursor to a much larger quake in San Francisco, and warns people to get out of town. And go where? Modesto? We have some room in our campus gym, but that's about it. The giant quake hits, the city is largely destroyed, and our characters go about surviving one way or another. Oh yeah, there are characters in the movie. I almost forgot.

So here's the thing. The San Andreas is a transform fault, meaning it shifts sideways during earthquakes. It behaves in a segmented manner, with a history of large, but not gigantic, earthquakes  (in the real world, the quakes top out at about 7.8-8.0 magnitude, about 1/30th the size of a magnitude 9 quake. The northern segment broke in 1906, the famous San Francisco quake at magnitude 7.8 (the movie "San Francisco", 1936, still stands as one of the best earthquake movies ever). The central segment, from Cajon Pass to Parkfield, broke less famously in 1857. The southernmost segment, down in the Palm Springs/Coachella Valley region, has not gone off in about 350 years. It is pretty much the most dangerous stretch of the fault in California. No, there aren't going to be any magnitude 9+ quakes in California. You'll have to look north to the Cascadia Subduction Zone in Washington and Oregon (and far north California) for that kind of thing.

Now I know it was there because the plot progression demanded it, but this will not happen. The San Andreas will slip sideways 10 or 20 feet, but the ground isn't going to open up like this. The plot was slowing down after Ray's helicopter crash-landed in Bakersfield, and the drive to San Francisco was going to take a boring four hours. Something was needed to make them steal an airplane and get there faster. Oh, and the San Andreas fault is a right lateral fault, meaning during the quake, the side of the fault opposite the observer would shift to the right. The photo is showing a left lateral fault. Oh, and they said this was the Central Valley. The San Andreas doesn't go through the Central Valley. Oh, and because the fault motion is primarily lateral, it doesn't disturb the seafloor enough to do this:

In fact, even the world's worst earthquakes don't make tsunamis this big. Nor do they curl in like a surfer wave on the North Shore of Oahu. But heck, by now our heroes are on a boat, so there are some cool dramatic scenes of ships being destroyed. The cargo ship was great (you'll just have to see the movie). Because the plot demanded it, the movie's only "bad" guy was on the bridge when the wave hit, and he looked just like the lawyer in "Jurassic Park" before the lawyer got munched by a T-rex. Only he wasn't on a toilet.

So there are screams, and explosions, and falling buildings. Really, someone needs to sue the architects, because their skyscrapers kept falling down everywhere. This is another point that needs to be addressed. Most modern buildings will not collapse during the "big one". You will just be asking for a world of hurt if you are trying to get out of such buildings during the quake. As the geologists in the movie said, over and over, "stop, drop, and cover". You'll be much better off.

This is the absolute best lesson in the entire movie. Get under cover, preferably with an attractive person. If the building really does collapse, who do you want to spend time with while waiting to be rescued?

Those are my thoughts in the immediate aftermath of the movie, except for one thing. A really big thing, and it isn't geological. Our movie hero is a search and rescue hotshot for Los Angeles. A big earthquake hits, and his first action? He takes a helicopter that is badly needed for rescue operations, and flies off to find his estranged wife. They then take off to San Francisco in what is now clearly a stolen helicopter, in a clear case of dereliction of his sworn duty as a public servant. He crashes the helicopter in Bakersfield and steals a truck, with the justification that he stole it from someone else who had stolen it (that makes it right, right?). He gives the truck to a kindly old couple, making them guilty of receiving stolen property, and steals an airplane. He purposely crashes the plane (well, the airports were destroyed), and then steals a boat. All this to find and "rescue" a daughter who actually has spent the entire movie making incredible good and smart decisions, as well as saving a number of people (more than dad, certainly). So Ray, Dwayne, Rock, or whatever, you should have stayed in LA and saved people. Your daughter was doing fine. That's what made Giamatti, the geologist Hayes, the greatest hero: he had information that could save countless lives, found a way to pass that information on to the people of California, and thus there were still some people left at the end of the movie to rebuild the state (so it can fall over again in a century or two).

But like I said, I rather enjoyed the whole movie, and the special effects were quite good, even if these were things that wouldn't happen in real life. Don't use this movie as your education in the nature of earthquakes. I highly recommend this sort of thing: http://www.earthquakecountry.org/roots/. Or this: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/.

I Successfully Predicted Four Earthquakes This Week! And Why Events in Italy Today are Chilling

Before anyone gets excited about today's headline, read the following disclaimer:

NOBODY CAN PREDICT EARTHQUAKES IN THE SHORT TERM THAT IS IN ANY WAY  USEFUL FOR PROTECTING LIVES AND PROPERTY!

Allow me to repeat myself...

NOBODY CAN PREDICT EARTHQUAKES IN THE SHORT TERM THAT IS IN ANY WAY  USEFUL FOR PROTECTING LIVES AND PROPERTY!

Now...let's read this together out loud in unison...

"NOBODY CAN PREDICT EARTHQUAKES IN THE SHORT TERM THAT IS IN ANY WAY  USEFUL FOR PROTECTING LIVES AND PROPERTY!"

Good. Let's move on...

Last week was Earth Science Week, and on Thursday we in California did emergency drills for earthquakes in the Great Shakeout. In conjunction with the Shakeout, I revised a previous post about the myths and misconceptions about California and earthquakes. It was quite long, so you may have missed that I predicted a couple of earthquakes in one of the later paragraphs. They were as follows:

• 200 earthquakes will occur in California,
• Of these, there will be a magnitude 4 quake in southern California, most likely in the Colorado Desert near Salton Sea.
• There will be a magnitude 3 earthquake in northern California, most likely north of the Bay Area, somewhere around Clear Lake.
• There will be a larger quake at the Vanuatu Islands in the Pacific Ocean, quite possibly in the magnitude 6 range.
• There will be a magnitude 5 earthquake offshore of Japan.

So, how did I do?

Source: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/

• There were 448 earthquakes in the last week in California.
• There was a 4.2 magnitude quake in Baja California, just over the border from the Salton Sea
• There was a 2.7 magnitude quake near Clear Lake, and a 3.6 magnitude quake a bit farther north near Arcata.
• There was a magnitude 6.2 quake near the Vanuatu Islands in the Pacific Ocean.
• And finally, there was a 4.8 magnitude quake near Japan.

How about that? Five for five. 100%. So I am an earthquake predictor par excellence, eh? No. Not at all. I did what any charlatan or fake psychic (and they're all fake) would do: I played the odds. Take a bit of geologic knowledge and set the parameters wide enough, and you will almost never get an earthquake "prediction" wrong. Earthquakes happen in particular regions, and the "background" seismicity will always include some slightly larger temblors.  "Psychics" have been predicting quakes for years to pad their scores on the yearly list of predictions for the new year. They are depending on getting enough easy predictions right so they sound like they have those "special powers" even though they get practically everything else wrong.

Here's what's wrong with this...they act with impunity, knowing they will never pay a price for being wrong. They will scare people without fear of arrest for causing worry and panic.

So what was the chilling news out of Italy today? It was this: six geologists were convicted of manslaughter for failing to predict a terrible quake that killed 309 people. They were scientists who were convicted for not foreseeing the unforeseeable.

This is a huge issue. Self-styled psychics and con artists can act with impunity without fear of punishment, while responsible seismologists and other scientists are put on trial for not being able to predict something that has never been successfully predicted. Something is very, very wrong in Italy, and I hope the geologists are cleared on appeal.

People who are caught in tragedies will always need some way of understanding what has happened to them. They will often turn to a scapegoat as a way of avoiding tragedy in the future. In ancient Israel, a goat (a "scapegoat") was symbolically loaded with the sins of the people and banished to the wilderness. In the culture of the day, when the gods ruled the heavens and controlled the natural disasters that affected society, it almost made sense to do this. In this modern era, it makes no sense at all to make scapegoats out of the scientists who are doing all they can to protect lives by understanding the patterns and probabilities of earthquakes.

We can't make short-term predictions, but we can certainly make long-term ones. This is a map of the probabilities of damaging earthquakes in California over the next 30 years. Should we arrest the geologists if a quake on this map turns out to be bigger than predicted?

How to tell if an Internet Prediction of an Imminent Earthquake is Credible...

The answer is easy: It is NOT CREDIBLE..

It's sort of like asking how you know a politician/car salesperson is lying (answer: their lips are moving).

Apparently a great many tweets have been generated by the prediction of an earthquake in Berkeley, and people are concerned about it (a typical story here). The predictions are garbage. One can make numerous predictions about quakes, and eventually some may come true. And a broken clock is right twice a day.

This isn't to say that a quake won't happen while you are reading this. It could happen. That is a great reason to prepared at ALL times (extra water, food, radio, flashlight, batteries, first aid kit), especially in California and the Bay Area along the San Andreas and Hayward faults. But no one is capable of predicting such quakes in advance, and it doesn't matter how "scientific" their reasoning sounds. No planetary alignments, earth tides, uneasy animals, nothing.

Foreshocks are possible harbingers of a larger quake, but there is no way to tell a foreshock from a main shock. And many big earthquakes happen without foreshocks.

It just can't be done, so don't be misled by Internet quake predictions, and for that matter, psychic predictions (you can read what I said about them a few weeks ago in this post).

In California, We Are Waiting for the BIG ONE! True or false? What everyone "knows" about earthquakes

Comic art by Zeo

We've reached the end of our seven question quiz on what everyone "knows" about California earthquakes, things which may be true or maybe aren't. These questions were the basis of a community lecture I gave a few weeks ago. The last two questions concerned the ability of psychics and animals to predict earthquakes, and yes, psychics are frauds when it comes to earthquake prediction, and we can't sense the world the way animals do, so basically, it is impossible to predict earthquakes in the kind of timely manner that will allow people to take cover or leave town. We just can't do that, not yet.

But there is still that nagging statement that you hear all the time in California. It's today's true-false question:

In California, we are waiting for the BIG ONE! True or False??

When I was on stage at the lecture, I made sure to say "the BIG ONE" in capital letters. How do you say something in capital letters? You do it in a deep baritone voice with your hand cupping the microphone; it's very dramatic.

So what is the answer? Well, actually the question is wrong and requires a bit of modification. Let's try it again, and in that deep baritone voice:

In California, we are waiting for the BIG ONES!

There, that's better. If we can't predict earthquakes, then how can this statement be possible? Doesn't it require the ability to predict earthquakes? Yes, it does. So the statement must be false. But it is not. The answer is TRUE!

Predicting earthquakes is not possible in the short term, as in hours or days, but a great deal can be said about the probability of earthquakes in a particular area over a period of decades. We can do this on the basis of the historical and prehistorical record of earthquakes along a particular fault zone, and by analysis of building stresses and tilting over a large region, as revealed by GPS stations and other related technology Check out the methodology of the 2007 Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities in this USGS PDF file.

As can be found on the map above, numerous fault zones represent a threat to the state of California. The fault zones are of different lengths, and therefore some will produce smaller quakes, but several are capable of producing large shocks approaching magnitude 7, and maybe even larger. These include the San Jacinto fault, the Owens Valley fault, the Hayward and Calaveras faults, and others. Even more important is the fact that the San Andreas itself is not a single monolithic fault zone. It has segments that behave independently. This was shown in 1857 and 1906, when completely different sections of the fault gave way, producing shocks that approached magnitude 8.

The most recently published studies show that earthquakes of 6.7 magnitude or greater are a virtual certainty over the next 30 years. The chance for an even greater quake is ominous, exceeding 70% for a magnitude 7.0, and a lesser, but still significant chance of even larger events. In a way, one of these quakes has already occurred, even though it was just south of the state: the El Mayor-Cucapah quake this year in northern Baja California was a magnitude 7.2 event.

Another wild card is the possibility of a large quake along the Cascadia subduction zone in the northernmost part of the state. It was not included in the probabilities, but numerous magnitude 7 quakes have taken place in that region in recent decades.

The lesson to be drawn from these predictions is that damaging earthquakes have happened all over California, and they will continue to do so in the future. Some of these quakes will be major events, causing many deaths and massive damage over large areas. The probability forecasts have great value in the sense that they are a warning to residents across the the state to be prepared at all times for earthquakes. We cannot know the precise moment that a large earthquake will strike, but we do know where they will happen, and how big they can be.



Psychics (and Animals) Predict Earthquakes: True or False? What Everyone "Knows" About Earthquakes

Comic art by Zeo (with slight modifications by Geotripper)

Well, let's see if I can't make a few (seismic) waves here. It's question number five in our brief quiz on what everybody "knows" about earthquakes in California (those things that are thought to be known, but which might not actually be true). These questions were the basis of a community lecture I gave last week. The question in this post is really about two different issues, so I am going to discuss the animals in the next post. So here is today's test question:

Psychics predict earthquakes: true or false?

The audience at the lecture last week was filled with skeptics and non-believers, to be frank, and came down firmly in favor of "false" for an answer. So they were a little surprised when I told them the actual answer:

TRUE!

They thought about it a moment, and realized that the statement is in fact true. Psychics predict earthquakes all the time. All the time, and then some more. Earthquakes are one of their most common predictions, more popular I think than predictions about aliens.

That leads to a revised question: Do psychic predictions about earthquakes come true?

My audience was on to me now, and there was a general murmer that psychic predictions are invariably wrong. I set them straight. I said "Psychics predict earthquakes all the time, and are almost invariably correct". I'm pretty sure there was a moment of silence before the audience started arguing the point with me.

I support my contention with a collection of predictions that I googled in about five minutes. I refuse to link to each of them because I have no interested in promoting their websites. If you want to find them, google the statement and it shouldn't take long to dig them up.

• Both earthquake and out of control fires will effect California causing devastation and loss [of] life. 
• There will be a violent earthquake, one of the strongest on record.[no location noted]
• My California earthquake prediction: yes, there WILL be an earthquake in California. I am not saying it will be along the San Andreas Fault or that it will be major. …I am also not saying when.
• I keep seeing the year 2011 like a pulsating animation within visions of major earth shifts in my home state of California. Dates perceived in months or years could be argued to have limited value in forecasting a time because we psychics move our consciousness in large spans of time and cover broad areas of locations and events.

Note how every one of these predictions came true. Oh, and my favorite, the shotgun prediction....

Wild Weather Predictions

1. Category five hurricane wipes out Miami.
2. The worst mudslides in California’s history will occur.
3. Mount St. Helens erupting.
4. Earthquake Seattle, Washington.
5. Earthquake Chicago, Illinois.
6. Part of the polar ice cap melts.
7. Wildfires spread to Beverley Hills and Los Angeles, Brentwood.
8. More tsunamis Sumatra Indonesia, Alaska, Hawaii and Japan.
9. A great earthquake in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.
10. Earthquake Lake Tahoe.
11. Earthquake Toronto and Quebec.
12. Earthquake Oregon.
13. Earthquake Grand Canyon.
14. Earthquake New York, Alaska, Japan, Greece.
15. Earthquake British Columbia, China and Iran.
16. Tornado in California.
17. Floods Amsterdam, Holland, Rhine River, Germany, Bangladesh, Great Britain. Venice, Italy, Gulf Coast of Florida and France.
18. Tsunami Malibu, California.
19. Wildfires Greece, Australia, Texas, Hawaii.
20. Mudslides in India, California.
21. Typhoon in Taiwan.
22. Tornadoes Oklahoma, Indiana, Texas, Illinois, Tennessee.
23. Great earthquake Rome and Naples, Italy.
24. Huge snowstorm and blizzards up the eastern seaboard affecting the great lakes – Toronto, Chicago, New York, Boston, etc.
25. Earthquake Yosemite and Yellowstone Park.

Note how many of these predictions haven't happened yet. Still, many will absolutely take place, allowing the psychic responsible for this list to claim broad success in his or her psychic powers.

Soooo...psychics accurately predict earthquakes. Well, guess what? I can predict earthquakes too! And I can be more specific than the average psychic. Here goes..

I predict that within the next week:

• 200 earthquakes will occur in California,
• Of these, there will be a magnitude 4 quake in southern California, most likely in the Colorado Desert near Salton Sea.
• There will be a magnitude 3 earthquake in northern California, most likely north of the Bay Area, somewhere around Clear Lake.
• There will be a larger quake at the Vanuatu Islands in the Pacific Ocean, quite possibly in the magnitude 6 range.
• There will be a magnitude 6 earthquake offshore of Japan.

I think I am going to be right. You are welcome to keep count and when the quakes happen you can hail me as a psychic earthquake predictor.

You can do that, but please note that my predictions have something in common with psychic predictions: the predictions are totally and absolutely useless to anybody.  They are about as useful as predicting that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Why? Because like the sun rising, earthquakes happen all the time, and they tend to happen in the same general places, mainly along tectonic plate boundaries (along with a few near hot spots like Hawaii or Yellowstone). It sounds impressive that 200 earthquakes will happen over the next week in California, but that happens nearly every week. Last week there were actually more, about 370.

Earthquake prediction is a serious business. On the one hand, a timely prediction can save lives. But a prediction made by a credible source that doesn't come to pass is a real problem. Like the boy who called "wolf" once too often, later predictions would be ignored. Charlatans who make spurious predictions can cause panic and unnecessary stress in an uninformed population (such a prediction in 1990 caused the population of St. Louis and surrounding region to close down businesses and leave town, and also caused a media circus).

An earthquake prediction, in order to save lives, must have three elements:

• the time (within a few days at most)
• the location (specific)
• the magnitude and depth

No psychic ever provides such information, which proves the useless nature of their "predictions". No one is in a position to predict earthquakes with such precision, including seismologists. Anyone who claims some special power of prediction is lying or deluded. No one has ever once saved lives with such predictions (the one successful prediction,ever, of a quake that saved lives, in China in 1975, was based on tangible evidence, and no psychic powers were claimed or invoked).

There is a form of a useful prediction regarding earthquakes. That will be discussed in a post in the very near future (that's a prediction that I am making!)

Psychics: give up the earthquakes. Stick to the lives of the Hollywood stars. They're more predictable anyway.

Giant California Earthquakes and the Radiation Cloud; California Falls into the Sea: Geotripper Emerges from the Apocalypse...

Welcome, survivors of the Apocalypse! Like you, I have been hiding in my underground bunker, safe from the radiation cloud and protected from the supermoon and giant earthquake that caused California to plunge into the sea. I'm waiting to see if my investment in oceanfront property on the Carrizo Plains has paid off with a nice seaside view. Did any of the southern California mountains remain as offshore islands? I was sort of hoping to have a few on the horizon. I've been rationing my cheetos, pringles and beef jerky. I lined my bunker with lots and lots of tin foil to protect myself from the electronic emanations of those pointy-headed "scientists" who kept poo-pooing the predictions of those who sensed the coming Apocalypse in their minds and mathematical calculations. As soon as I saw the work of the prophets on the Internet I knew it had to be true. Their prophecies were aired by the cable news networks, so I double-knew it had to be true. I didn't feel the earthquake because I built my shelter on a spring-loaded foundation. Was it really shaky? My clock broke, so I've been estimating the number of days I've been in hiding by making chalk marks on the wall; it's 2012 isn't it? The Mayan calendar came to an end and all? Have the Zombies died out yet?

Well, that's that. The supermoon weekend passed and California is still here. The full moon didn't scrape along the ground and erase cities. There were no tidal disruptions. There was no earthquake. There were no volcanic eruptions. No one melted from the radiation cloud. The prophets and predictors were wrong, yet again, wrong again for the umpteenth time. Over and over they are wrong. Hundreds of times they have been wrong. And still they find a stage on the cable news networks, the Internet, the radio...over and over. There always seems to be a crowd of uninformed and misinformed people who take them seriously, and there are uninformed and misinformed news readers who are unable to critically assess their irresponsible claims. At the same time they dismiss the statements and findings of academics who have given over their lives to the study and understanding of the earth sciences. And in the end the charlatans and fakes are never brought to account for scaring people and causing economic disruptions.

I've seen enough of "judgment journalism" in politics to know that cable news outlets are capable of shaming those who cross the line of honesty and decency. They are capable of using their media platform to upbraid and criticize officials who steal money or engage in hypocritical behaviour. Why are they not criticizing and shaming those who carelessly predicted earthquakes and radiation poisoning without regard to the consequences of being totally (and predictably) wrong? I have never seen the news readers take a self-proclaimed "psychic" to task for their hundreds of wrong predictions.

Wouldn't it be nice just once to see a camera crew waiting outside the home of one of those self-proclaimed psychics or would-be earthquake prophets and ask them over and over why they made yet another wrong claim that needlessly scared people? Just once to hear them told to their face that they are charlatans and fakes? How long will the con artists persist when they know they will be subjected to public derision when they make their spurious claims?

In the meantime, the media outlets need to learn the real facts about the possibilities of quakes and other hazards in California (and anywhere else) and make sure their audiences know the actual magnitude of the threat. The faults are here after all, and there is a lot of built-up stress. Damaging quakes will happen, and we need to all be as prepared as possible. The first thing to do is to arm yourself with knowledge. Get this knowledge from responsible government agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey, or the California Geological Survey, or academic organizations like the Southern California Earthquake Center. Then you make the appropriate preparations: keep emergency supplies of water, flashlights, radios, batteries, and first aid kits, both in your home, and in your car. Have a family plan for what to do when disaster strikes.

By the way, it is ok to have pringles and cheetos in your emergency supplies...but put some healthy stuff in there too. There is junk food and there is junk news. Too much of either can be harmful to your health.

Predicting Earthquakes in California? I can do that too! I'll do it right now...

By golly, there is going to be an earthquake in California tomorrow! I'm going to go out on a limb and predict it. In fact, I will state unequivocally that there will be several earthquakes in California, some in the north state, and some in the south state. And I will be correct in my predictions. So, that should net me a few stories on the cable news networks, and a flood of tweets across the Internet by worried people who don't really believe it, but it could be true, you know....

What's my secret? There is no secret. California has earthquakes every day. We had 368 of them in the last week alone (368 quakes in a week is NOT unusual...sometimes there are more, sometimes there are less, but always there are hundreds). Check out the map below:

This blog was prompted by another flurry of requests from students and readers about someone somewhere predicting that we would have a big quake in California tomorrow; I won't provide links. They scare people needlessly, and it is irresponsible.

Anyone can predict quakes. But no one can predict large quakes with any kind of accuracy that will save lives. We can make long-term evaluations about the chances that a particular fault will rupture within a period of decades. But we can't predict big quakes a few days in advance. Anyone who says so is plain flat-out wrong. They will keep predicting quakes one after another, and one of these days, one of their hundreds of predictions will come true, and they will cash in.

I have a funny sense of deja vu, like we've been here before...

From my post of April 13, 2010:
8.4 Quake in California? Don't believe everything that Tweets...

No.

I should stop there, but I will say that no one can predict quakes in any useful way.

California's biggest quakes will be in the range of 7.8-8.0, quite a few times smaller than an 8.4. The stresses are there for a large quake to happen, but a magnitude 8 quake is given only a 4% chance of occurring sometime in the next 30 years.

Please don't believe everything that tweets....

But do prepare for quakes in California. They CAN happen any time, but NO ONE can predict them.

From my post of April 15, 2010:

8.4 Quake in California? Not so fast there, Twitterers...

If you have not read XKCD comics, you have been missing out on a great treat, especially if you are the scientific nerdy type of personality. On the heels of the Sierra El Mayor earthquake in Baja California, the comic above made the rounds, revealing a great truth: we are a wired, interconnected society (surprise!). Of course, there are the disadvantages as well.

So, to explain Tuesday's brief post: the XKCD comic above came true in a fashion...except there was no earthquake. I was checking my e-mails during a short break in my night class, and I had several people asking if the tweets they had received from friends were true, was the state of California declaring that an 8.4 magnitude quake would be hitting within the next 48 hours? Then I saw a few phones open up in class, and someone asked me directly about the Tweet on their phone. Clearly a rumor was spreading with the speed of electromagnetic energy and texting fingers. A hoax? An idiot crying 'fire' in a theatre? Undoubtedly. I posted my brief message explaining why the Tweet wasn't true, and had more than 2,000 hits in the space of 90 minutes. By the midnight, the 20th ranking query on Google was '8.4 magnitude earthquake in California'.

A lot of damage is done when rumors like this spread. No one can predict earthquakes, and a false prediction like this (or from 'psychics') can unnecessarily frighten people, and lead to a situation that will be perceived as crying 'Wolf'. People will stop paying attention to real warnings by qualified seismologists and vulcanologists.

We cannot predict earthquakes in such a way as to know the day, the week, or the month. We can use the history and prehistoric behaviour of fault zones to determine the possibility of a large quake within a time frame of decades. If you want a scientifically grounded prediction about earthquakes in California, check out the diagram below, from the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF). The message to take away? Ignore the tweets, and pay attention to your personal emergency preparations. Quakes will happen.

Update #1: A nice explanation of why we can't predict big quakes can be found here.

I Didn't Feel Like Teaching Today...

...but it was the kind of day that demands teaching.

My first day back with classes after the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in Sendai, Japan, and the perfect teachable moment. Only it doesn't feel like a teachable moment. I just felt sorrow. So much is going on, and the situation seems to change hour to hour. First it was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. Those don't happen very often, and that would be enough by itself to toss out the lesson plan of the day and discuss earthquakes and magnitude. But then there was the horrific tsunami that changed everything. 80 miles is a pretty good distance to be from a magnitude 9 quake, and it looks like the structures along Japan's coast weathered the shaking pretty well. But the tsunami raged through and erased towns, wiping them out of existence. Without the tsunami, the quake would have been a footnote. With the tsunami this event became the ultimate human tragedy. Thousands dead, hundreds of thousands homeless. It's hard to even speak of it, much less try and understand the pain and suffering that is taking place across the sea.

But then a new threat; the nuclear power stations began failing one after another in a story that is still unfolding. A human-induced tragedy superimposed over a nature event. We've concentrated radioactive substances in order to produce a form of energy, and the engineers have always told us that it can be made safe. Despite Three-Mile Island, despite Chernobyl, despite the other 30 'incidents' in the past 50 years. We've 'learned' from each of the accidents, it is said. They can't happen elsewhere. We have back up systems. We can't give up nuclear energy they say, because it is the bridge to a renewable energy future. Otherwise we'll have to burn more coal, and coal contributes to global warming. In all of the chattering among the talking heads on cable news this weekend, I have heard nothing of the threat of terrorism at nuclear power plants, nor have I heard anyone talk about where the highly radioactive waste is going to go. We've been avoiding the second problem for 50 years now. Will these questions start emerging, or will they disappear once the meltdown is complete, or once they stop the meltdown from occurring.

So the lesson plan for the day is tossed. We talk about the earthquake, the tsunami, the nuclear power plants. Questions, one after another. Some I can answer, some I cannot.

Can we have a magnitude 9 quake in California? Yes and no. The legendary San Andreas fault can produce events in the range of magnitude 8, about 1/30th of the size of the Sendai earthquake. Many other faults in California have produced dozens of quakes in the range of magnitude 6.5-7.5, and some have been very damaging. Magnitude 9? Not exactly. The Cascadia subduction zone lies off the coast of Northern California, and extends across Oregon and Washington. That system produced a magnitude 9 quake in 1700. Studies show such a quake takes place every few hundred years. Such a quake would have devastating consequences in NorCal and the Pacific Northwest.

Are the nuclear power plants going to have a full meltdown? I have no idea. I'm not an expert, and I don't know that the experts even know.

Will we be hit by a dangerous radioactive cloud? I don't think so, the experts say it will dissipate in the atmosphere and fall into the ocean before it gets here. I'm more worried about the people who live in the vicinity of the power plants. If the worst case scenario happens, the land they have lived on all their lives could be declared uninhabitable. Where will they go?

I'm glad the meltdown didn't happen here. How many of you know where your energy comes from? California has two operating nuclear power plants, both on the coast, both near fault systems. Another mothballed power plant sits unused just 80 miles from us, with all the fuel rods on site. The engineers for the plants say they're ready for whatever happens (I bite my tongue to avoid getting political).

Can a tsunami hit us in the Central Valley the way it did in Japan? No, not likely, but we have a different problem: the Sacramento Delta. The three dozen or so islands in the Delta are 'protected' by century-old levees that are prone to failure from causes as simple as excessive muskrat burrowing. The islands have sunk over the last century, and most are now below sea level. A moderate quake on nearby faults could cause widespread failure and flood the islands with seawater. If it were just lost farmlands, we could deal with it. But the intake pumps for the California Water Project are in the midst of the islands and the inundation could cut off the water supply for 20 million people for months, if not years.

What will the "Big One" do to us? It depends which "Big One" you are talking about. A repeat of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco? Or the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake? Or the 1872 Lone Pine quake Or another? All of them were close to magnitude 8, and if they happened again, the results would be profound. And there are dozens of other active fault zones in California. But here in the Central Valley? Harder to say. The 1906 quake was certainly felt in the region, but didn't do much damage in our town. Cities and towns on the west side of the valley will have some serious problems with shaking and liquefaction, but we are on relatively stable sediments.

Where's the best place to live? Kansas or Nebraska I should think. But watch out for tornadoes. Here in California, I would pick the Sierra foothills. Solid bedrock foundations and relatively far removed from the most active fault zones.

I have a question for the class: How many of you have an earthquake emergency kit ready at home (and in the car)? Two or three hands, including my own...

We are not ready...

Do you have questions? Use the comments section to ask and I will answer if I can, or find an answer somewhere.

8.4 Quake in California? Not so fast there, Twitterers...

If you have not read XKCD comics, you have been missing out on a great treat, especially if you are the scientific nerdy type of personality. On the heels of the Sierra El Mayor earthquake in Baja California, the comic above made the rounds, revealing a great truth: we are a wired, interconnected society (surprise!). Of course, there are the disadvantages as well.

So, to explain Tuesday's brief post: the XKCD comic above came true in a fashion...except there was no earthquake. I was checking my e-mails during a short break in my night class, and I had several people asking if the tweets they had received from friends were true, was the state of California declaring that an 8.4 magnitude quake would be hitting within the next 48 hours? Then I saw a few phones open up in class, and someone asked me directly about the Tweet on their phone. Clearly a rumor was spreading with the speed of electromagnetic energy and texting fingers. A hoax? An idiot crying 'fire' in a theatre? Undoubtedly. I posted my brief message explaining why the Tweet wasn't true, and had more than 2,000 hits in the space of 90 minutes. By the midnight, the 20th ranking query on Google was '8.4 magnitude earthquake in California'.

A lot of damage is done when rumors like this spread. No one can predict earthquakes, and a false prediction like this (or from 'psychics') can unnecessarily frighten people, and lead to a situation that will be perceived as crying 'Wolf'. People will stop paying attention to real warnings by qualified seismologists and vulcanologists.

We cannot predict earthquakes in such a way as to know the day, the week, or the month. We can use the history and prehistoric behaviour of fault zones to determine the possibility of a large quake within a time frame of decades. If you want a scientifically grounded prediction about earthquakes in California, check out the diagram below, from the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF). The message to take away? Ignore the tweets, and pay attention to your personal emergency preparations. Quakes will happen.

8.4 Quake in California? Don't believe everything that Tweets...

No.

I should stop there, but I will say that no one can predict quakes in any useful way.

California's biggest quakes will be in the range of 7.8-8.0, quite a few times smaller than an 8.4. The stresses are there for a large quake to happen, but a magnitude 8 quake is given only a 4% chance of occurring sometime in the next 30 years.

Please don't believe everything that tweets....

But do prepare for quakes in California. They CAN happen any time, but NO ONE can predict them.

A Random Classroom Conversation and Geologic Predictions for a New Year

The professor speaks: “ Psychics predict earthquakes! True or false?”

The class: “False!” (They know I’m up to something, so even if they believe in psychic phenomena, they know as science class students they should and will almost always say “false”.)

The professor: “No, it’s true!”

Confusion ripples through the classroom for a moment. And then they get it.

The class: “Oh, we get it; sure they predict earthquakes. But they aren’t correct.”

The Professor: “But they ARE correct!”

The class: “Huh? But you’re a science teacher. You aren’t supposed to believe that stuff….”

The Professor: “Look at the usual prediction…a great earthquake will destroy a major city at some point during this year… How could they go wrong? If you set the parameters loosely enough, you will always be right. The only useful prediction will include the place, the time and the magnitude, and no one has really done that yet”

The class: “You know Professor? You are right! Those psychics don’t really predict earthquakes at all! We all really learned something today! Thank you for your brilliance!”

OK, I lied about the ending of the conversation. That never happens in my classes.

I would like to offer my predictions for the new geological year, in the spirit of BrianR at Clastic Detritus. But first, a disclaimer. This is a joke. If you googled something about earthquakes being predicted and volcanic disasters being foretold, I am doing this as a parody, and am not really making predictions. Just the same, check the note at the bottom of the page...

Here are my predictions:

• The long awaited BIG ONE, the magnitude 8 quake, will take place on the San Andreas Fault. San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or San Diego, or Palm Springs will be devastated. Despite the arguments of geologists, everything east of the fault will fall into the Atlantic Ocean.

• Yellowstone will erupt with the force of a million hydrogen bombs, and screw up Dick Cheney's vacation home in Wyoming. He will be hiding in an undisclosed location at the time and will be uninjured.

• Mt. Shasta will erupt and form a gaping caldera. In a few decades the hole will fill with water, but will have to be emptied out when the state of Oregon sues for copyright/trademark infringement.

• A giant asteroid will land in the Pacific Ocean and cause the extinction of human beings. The dominant species to survive the event will be the little geckos who sell insurance on tv.

• The Greenland Ice Cap will melt completely away, causing sea level to rise 30 feet, inundating vast areas of the coastlines of the world and displacing hundreds of millions. Global Warming deniers will blame sunspots.

• Oil prices will top out at more than $140 a barrel (Oh wait, ignore that one, can't possibly happen...)

• Oil prices will plunge to $35 a barrel (Oh wait, ignore that one, can't possibly happen...)

• Geologists will be hired out of college with huge salaries (Oh wait, ignore that one, can't possibly happen...)

• Geologists out of college won't be able to find jobs (Oh wait, ignore that one, happens every year...)

• Geologists will come to the conclusion that the Grand Canyon was actually carved very recently by a giant iron tool after discovering the fossil of a giant aquamarine bovine nearby.

Well, that's all the psychic energy I have for the day. If, even after noting the disclaimer above, any of these events come to pass, I want full credit for predicting them....