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Almost every day a news report comes out linking something to climate change – obesity, food riots or a century of wildfires. Some of the claims seem especially outlandish. Sometimes they are. On June 18, CBS.com posted a story claiming that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago because of global warming. The story had no byline, but was attributed to the Associated Press. The story was identical to a June 17 Market Wire press release attributed to Tom Chalko, the scientist that made the claim of the earthquake/global...

Eight in past week, two of which were in the past hour. Probably just a statistical artifact, but something for the rest of us living on other parts of the Ring of Fire to keep in mind...

Big Earthquakes Spark Jolts Worldwide ScienceDaily (May 26, 2008) — Until 1992, when California's magnitude-7.3 Landers earthquake set off small jolts as far away as Yellowstone National Park, scientists did not believe large earthquakes sparked smaller tremors at distant locations. Now, a definitive study shows large earthquakes routinely trigger smaller jolts worldwide, including on the opposite side of the planet and in areas not prone to quakes. "Previously it was thought seismically active regions or geothermal areas were most vulnerable to large earthquake triggers," says Kris Pankow, a seismologist at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations and a co-author of...

MEXICO CITY (AP) ― A moderate earthquake has rattled Mexico, but no major injuries or damages have been reported. The U.S. Geological Center has given the quake a preliminary magnitude of 5.8. It was centered 96 miles (154 kilometers) north of Acapulco. Sunday's quake caused office buildings to sway and sent many frightened residents into the streets of the capital, Mexico City. Helicopters immediately clattered overhead searching for damage.

Ring of fire ....

RENO, Nev. (AP) ― Scientists urged residents of northern Nevada's largest city to prepare for a bigger event as the area continued rumbling Saturday after the largest earthquake in a two-month-long series of temblors. More than 100 aftershocks were recorded on the western edge of the city after a magnitude 4.7 quake hit Friday night, the strongest quake around Reno since one measuring 5.2 in 1953, said researchers at the seismological laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno. The latest quake swept store shelves clean, cracked walls in homes and dislodged rocks on hillsides, but there were no reports of...

Just happening now.

Contact: Nan Broadbent press@seismosoc.org 408-431-9885 Seismological Society of America Unearthing clues of catastrophic earthquakes 'An inviting tale of destruction' SANTA FE, New Mexico -- The destruction and disappearance of ancient cultures mark the history of human civilization, making for fascinating stories and cautionary tales. The longevity of today’s societies may depend upon separating fact from fiction, and archeologists and seismologists are figuring out how to join forces to do just that with respect to ancient earthquakes, as detailed in new studies presented at the international conference of the Seismological Society of America. "It's an idea whose time has come, "...

California - land of sun, beaches and earthquakes - faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong temblor by 2037, scientists said Monday in the first statewide forecast of the seismic threat. New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will hit the Golden State in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97 percent versus 93 percent. The last time a jolt this size rattled California was the 1994 Northridge disaster, which killed 72 people, injured more than...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - Scientists listening to underwater microphones have detected an unusual swarm of earthquakes off the central Oregon Coast. Scientists don't know what the earthquakes mean, but they could be the result of magma rumbling underneath the Juan de Fuca Plate - away from the recognized earthquake faults off Oregon, said geophysicist Robert Dziak of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore. They hope to send out the OSU research ship, Wecoma, to take water samples, looking for evidence that sediment on the ocean bottom has been...

Curious cloud formations linked to quakes 11 April 2008 From New Scientist Print Edition. Lynn Dicks CAN unusual clouds signal the possibility of an impending earthquake? That's the question being asked following the discovery of distinctive cloud formations above an active fault in Iran before each of two large earthquakes occurred. Geophysicists Guangmeng Guo and Bin Wang of Nanyang Normal University in Henan, China, noticed a gap in the clouds in satellite images from December 2004 that precisely matched the location of the main fault in southern Iran. It stretched for hundreds of kilometres, was visible for several hours and...

2002 Alaskan Quake Left Seven Areas Of California Stirred But Not Shaken ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2007) — Earth tremors not linked to volcanic activity first turned up in seismic observations several years ago, but those tremors were almost exclusively in subduction zones such as the Cascadia region off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. New research has found evidence of tremors along non-subduction zone faults in seven California locations. The tremors immediately followed the magnitude 7.8 Denali earthquake in Alaska on Nov. 3, 2002 and are linked to that quake even though they are as much as 2,400 miles from...

Started with a 6.2 before noon Pacific time. Followed by a 5+ and just in a 5.8

Posted this question on another thread but had very little response. As I look at the ring of fire right now, there is a massive amount of activity, BIG activity in the Pacific ocean towards Asia. There is also a lot of activity in South America and a little in Central America. The only thing on my chart on the west coast that registered at 4.0 or above was a small quake in Oregon. Question is, with all of these plates shifting, and the plates around our nation's plates staying pretty quiet, what is this doing to our risks of...

Pacific shaken by strong quakes Two high-magnitude earthquakes have hit different parts of the Pacific Ocean, officials in the US and Japan say. A 7.3 magnitude quake struck at 0525 GMT south of New Zealand's South Island, with no reports of injuries. Earlier, the US territory of Guam was shaken by weaker tremor. Islanders in high-rise buildings felt the quake but reported no damage, local media said. The US-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said neither quake was likely to cause a destructive tsunami. The stronger tremor hit about 500km (310 miles) off the coast of New Zealand, around the uninhabited...

LIMA (Reuters) - Two powerful earthquakes within minutes of each other struck Peru on Wednesday shaking buildings in the capital and cutting power in some areas. The first quake, with a magnitude of 7.7, hit about 20 miles (33 km) west of Chincha Alta, at a shallow 11.2 miles (18 km) from the earth's surface, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It said the second had a magnitude of 7.5. Office buildings in Lima shook in at least two different bouts that lasted around 20 seconds each, and workers ran out into the streets in fear, witnesses said. The USGS says...

If you lived through the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994 you know what a mere seven seconds of shaking can do. Could you imagine over two minutes of intense shaking? Scientists can. "When it comes to natural hazards, southern Californians are at great risk," says Lucy Jones, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Coordinator of the new USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project. "We all know this. Earthquakes, wildfires, floods, tsunamis, landslides and coastal erosion are inevitable and its time to look at them closely and prepare." Scientists from around the Nation are being pulled together by the USGS to work with community...

LOS ANGELES – Developers plan a $1 billion downtown condominium complex with twin towers – one rising 76 stories to make it the tallest residential building in the West. There would be 732 condos. Plans unveiled Monday for the Park Fifth complex overlooking Pershing Square park also call for a 14-story, 218-room luxury hotel. The two blue-green glass condo towers – the shorter one 43 stories – would rise above the hotel. It's the latest massive development planned downtown from Bunker Hill south to the Staples Center. “This is the first time in 30 years that all the stars have...

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Date: April 12, 2007 NASA Data Show Earthquakes May Quickly Boost Regional Volcanoes Science Daily — Scientists using NASA satellite data have found strong evidence that a major earthquake can lead to a nearly immediate increase in regional volcanic activity. The intensity of two ongoing volcanic eruptions on Indonesia's Java Island increased sharply three days following a powerful, 6.4-magnitude earthquake on the island in May 2006. The increased volcanic activity persisted for about nine days. The Merapi and Semeru volcanoes released plumes of ash and steam on June 8, 2006. The plumes (gray) with Merapi...

Occured about 10 minutes ago, at 8:42 pm Eastern Time 5:42 pm Pacific Time US on Saturday night. People are being warned to get away from the western coastland areas in Western Japan--facing the Sea of Japan, specifically in and near Ishikawa Prefecture. 7.1 magnitude earthquake, about 6 on the Japanese scale. Felt in Nagano Prefecture as well. These areas are all considerably away from Tokyo and earthquake itself not felt in Tokyo. Tsunami warnings are being broadcast on most Japanese TV stations right now. The estimated times of the "wave" hitting the coast are being broadcast.

Coal Mining Causing Earthquakes, Study Says Richard A. Lovett for National Geographic News January 3, 2007 The most damaging earthquake in Australia's history was caused by humans, new research says. The magnitude-5.6 quake that struck Newcastle, in New South Wales, on December 28, 1989, killed 13 people, injured 160, and caused 3.5 billion U.S. dollars worth of damage (Australia map). That quake was triggered by changes in tectonic forces caused by 200 years of underground coal mining, according to a study by Christian D. Klose of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. The quake wasn't enormous, but...

Moon and rain could mean quakes 25 October 2006 From New Scientist Print Edition. A full moon may have triggered the Indian Ocean earthquake that caused the tsunami on 26 December 2004, a new study concludes. Between October 2004 and August 2005 Robin Crockett from the University of Northampton, UK, and his colleagues monitored tremors and collected tidal data along the Java/Sumatra trench. They found that major quakes were 86 per cent more likely around new and full moons, when tides are at their greatest. "At new and full moons the biggest mass of water is being loaded and unloaded...

PASADENA, Calif. A new computer model projecting a massive earthquake suggests that even buildings constructed in accordance with the latest codes would tumble in the Southland, it was reported Monday. Structural engineer Swaminathan Krishnan and his colleagues used Caltech’s large supercomputer and modeled what might happen if a massive earthquake rattled tall buildings in the Los Angeles area, the Pasadena Star-News reported. The results, researchers told the newspaper, are both a hint at the possible devastation of "the big one" and a starting point for future generations of even more accurate models. With the supercomputer, the researchers watched as a...

PASADENA - The drums are gone. The quivering lines on huge rolls of white paper that have come to represent the strength of an earthquake are a thing of the past, according to scientists at the California Institute of Technology and the U.S. Geological Survey. When the next big one hits - and scientists emphasize there is no good way of knowing when that will be - the temblor will be converted into a digital animation showing waves ripple across Southern California like the disturbed surface of an otherwise quiet pond. "The drums represent outdated technology," said Jeroen Tromp, director...

Imagine the surface of Earth as a giant trampoline that accumulated a slab of ice over the winter, and you can get a sense of what a growing number of scientists say is in store for the planet as glaciers keep melting. Once the trampoline's ice turns to water that drips over the edges in the warm days of spring, the concave elastic slowly rebounds to its original flat shape. That's how Earth responds as glaciers retreat, and the consequences promise to be ... interesting. The reason is that one cubic meter of ice weighs just over a ton, and...

In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America's coastline this year. Robertson has made the predictions at least four times in the past two weeks on his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. Robertson said the revelations about this year's weather came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January. "If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he...

Concentrations of the natural pigment chlorophyll in coastal waters have been shown to rise prior to earthquakes. These chlorophyll increases are due to blooms of plankton, which use the pigment to convert solar energy to chemical energy via photosynthesis. A joint US-Indian team of researchers analysed satellite data on ocean coastal areas lying near the epicentres of four recent quakes. Details of the research appear in the journal Advances in Space Research. They say that monitoring peaks in chlorophyll could provide early information on an impending earthquake. The authors say the chlorophyll blooms are linked to a release of thermal...

Skip to main contentAccess keys helpA-Z index BBC logo * Home * News * Sport * Radio * TV * Weather * Languages BBC NewsWATCH/LISTEN TO BBC NEWS UK versionInternational version About the versions|Low graphics|Help|Contact us News Front Page Africa Americas Asia-Pacific Europe Middle East South Asia UK Business Health Science/Nature Technology Entertainment ----------------- Have Your Say In Pictures Country Profiles In Depth Programmes RSS Feed What is RSS? RELATED BBC SITES * SPORT * WEATHER * ON THIS DAY * NEWSWATCH LANGUAGES * Chinese * Vietnamese * Indonesian * Burmese * More Last Updated: Wednesday, 3 May 2006, 18:22...

California's dreamy landscape can turn into a nightmare within seconds - a fact that Antelope Valley residents should keep in mind with the San Andreas fault system planted in their back yards. As the California Department of Insurance Web site puts it, "Natural disasters are a part of the price we all pay for living in beautiful California. Fires, mudslides, floods and earthquakes are a few of the natural disasters common to our state. "Earthquakes in particular send a tremor of fear through most Californians." The devastation of loss is compounded for individuals and families who lack earthquake insurance. Vivid...

PORTLAND, Ore. - Using hand-me-down technology from the Cold War, scientists have discovered that the seafloor off the Pacific Northwest is a jumping kind of place, with thousands of small, swarming earthquakes and tectonic plates that are slowly rearranging themselves. The findings could mean that a "Big One" earthquake may not be as severe as previously thought, the lead researcher said. An article in the journal Geology by researcher Robert Dziak describes the findings. Dziak is an associate professor at Oregon State University who also works for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. He's stationed at OSU's Hatfield Marine Science Center...

Hurricane Katrina's devastating strike on New Orleans last fall highlighted shortcomings in the city's levee system. It also focused attention another long-term problem: The city and the region around it are sinking. New research suggests, however, that at least for nearby Michoud, La., the dominant driver pulling the region under may not be among the usual suspects: oil extraction, pumping groundwater to the surface, or diverting the Mississippi for navigation. Instead, the King of Slump may be a deep fault that cuts across southeastern Louisiana and under Michoud. During the 1970s, the fault appears to have contributed from 50 to...

Magnitude 6.1 - KEPULAUAN TALAUD, INDONESIA 2006 March 31 21:14:40 UTC Magnitude 6.1 (Strong) Date-Time Friday, March 31, 2006 at 21:14:40 (UTC) = Coordinated Universal Time Saturday, April 1, 2006 at 5:14:40 AM = local time at epicenter Location 3.895°N, 126.305°E Depth 4.7 km (2.9 miles) (poorly constrained) Region KEPULAUAN TALAUD, INDONESIA Distances 275 km (170 miles) SSE of General Santos, Mindanao, Philippines 310 km (195 miles) NNE of Manado, Sulawesi, Indonesia 1320 km (820 miles) SSE of MANILA, Philippines 2445 km (1510 miles) ENE of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.

Glacial earthquakes rock Greenland ice sheet 12:36 24 March 2006 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht A rapid increase in “glacial earthquakes” – caused by sudden large movements of glaciers – over the past few years indicates that warmer temperatures will destroy the Greenland ice sheet faster than expected, a new study warns. Surface meltwater is not dribbling away, as if from a giant ice block melting slowly, but is seeping through cracks to the bottom of the glacier. Once there it forms a layer that "helps lift the glacier up from the rock" so it flows faster to the sea,...

Scandinavian humanitarian organizations are pulling the plug on aid to victims of last year's devastating tsunami and earthquake disasters, saying the safety of their relief workers has been jeopardized by Muslim rioters protesting cartoons depicting Mohammed. The Red Cross, Norwegian Peoples Aid, Norwegian Church Aid and the Norwegian Refugee Council announced Thursday that they will be suspending aid projects in Indonesia and Pakistan, reports the Norwegian Broadcasting network [NRK]. Danish aid organizations have also announced they are halting relief operations in some Muslim nations. "It is tragic that this has come in the way, but we must first and foremost...

A Minoan settlement after destruction by earthquakesDig at Fournoi Afiatis on Karpathos uncovers ancient buildings A view of the flat area with the roof knocked down by the earthquake, along with part of the supporting wall and the adjoining wall. By Iota Sykka - Kathimerini Earthquakes were responsible for the destruction of a Minoan settlement on the island of Karpathos. That was the conclusion drawn following excavations conducted last year at Fournoi Afiatis on Karpathos under the direction of Manolis Melas, a professor of archaeology. The dig was part of a research program by the Dimokritio University of Thrace. The...

LANCASTER - For Andrea Donnellan, the Earth moves. Well, the land beneath us moves for us all. It's actually in a continual state of flux. But Donnellan, a geophysicist and deputy manager of the Science Division at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, takes a special interest in the Earth's movements. Donnellan was the keynote speaker Friday at the Bohn-Meyer Math and Science Odyssey at Antelope Valley College. Roughly 150 eighth-grade students from 10 schools attended the day of workshops related to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Donnellan served up a slide presentation titled "Living on a Restless Planet," demonstrating how...

The cracks that appeared in the levee of the Yangtze River after a 5.7-magnitude earthquake hit Jiujiang in East China's Jiangxi Province on Saturday "pose no danger for the time being," said government officials yesterday. The cracks were found in the Yong'an section of the levee, 30 metres above the ground, Zheng Keqiang, deputy secretary-general of the Jiangxi provincial government, said at a news conference. "The cracks will cause no immediate havoc as the Yangtze River is in dry season," Zheng said. The earthquake, measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale, rocked Ruichang and Jiujiang on Saturday morning, killing at least...

AN event that occurred 250 years ago today stands as a singular reminder that the war between faith and science in America did not start in Dover, Pa., where several school board members who promoted the teaching of intelligent design were voted out of office last week, or even in that Tennessee courthouse in 1925 where John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution. It has been a recurring theme in our history since the very seedtime of the republic. In the early hours of Nov. 18, 1755, the most destructive earthquake ever recorded in the eastern United States struck at...

The U.S. Geological Survey released a three-dimensional computer model of the upper portion of the Earth's crust in the Bay Area designed to give researchers better insight into the region's earthquakes. The computer model of the upper 20 miles of the Earth's crust will enable scientists to recreate the shaking levels of past earthquakes, including the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1906 San Francisco earthquakes. It should also assist in predicting future earthquakes. "We expect this new 3-D model to revolutionize our ability to forecast the location of 'hotspots,' where shaking occurs most intensely, throughout the Bay Area," USGS seismologist Tom...

Pat Robertson's wrong ------------------------------------------------------- Posted: October 12, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Gary DeMar © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Pat Robertson is making predictions again. He's reading the Bible through current events rather than letting the Bible speak for itself. In Matthew 24:7, Jesus says that "in various places there will be famines and earthquakes." He says nothing about an increase in their number or intensity. Luke writes, "There will be great earthquakes" (Luke 21:11). Jesus wasn't describing events that would precede the end of our time. Rather, He was describing signs that led up to the destruction of the temple in...

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones remembers attending an emergency training session in August 2001 with the Federal Emergency Management Agency that discussed the three most likely catastrophes to strike the United States. First on the list was a terrorist attack in New York. Second was a super-strength hurricane hitting New Orleans. Third was a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault. Now that the first two have come to pass, she and other earthquake experts are using the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an opportunity to reassess how California would handle a major temblor. Jones, scientist-in-charge for the...

In the wake of all that has happened and watching the events that unfold hourly, and keeping up with the Katrina live threads, I thought I would post a thread that could help all of us on FR and those visiting, lurkers etc... I know that we are an intelligent, creative, and ingenuous bunch, so I am tapping many of you and others to contribute your emergency preparedness plans, ideas, or homebrew solutions to emergency problems. Just to start off, here are a few things my family and I have decided during an emergency, be it natural disaster, civil insurrection,...

All Earthquake List for World Address:http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.html Got a swarm going on in Southern Cali.

After California quakes, attention turns to New Madrid zoneATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Recent earthquake activity in California has prompted fresh speculation about "the big one" -- an enormous quake along California's West Coast. A few have been large enough to shake the faith of skeptics -- a magnitude 7.2 quake on June 15, followed two days later by a magnitude 6.7, both off the coast near the California-Oregon border. Doomsayers have warned about the Pacific Coast for years. But only a few have raised concerns about an area with the potential to be more dangerous than California -- the New...

Shep Smith had a short segment on about Japan having 5 earthquakes today. Some were sizeable and there were reported injuries.

http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/step/ this is an interesting earthquake prediction source.

WASHINGTON -- Northern metropolitan Los Angeles is being squeezed at a rate of five millimeters [0.2 inches] a year, straining an area between two earthquake faults that serve as geologic bookends north and south of the affected region, according to NASA scientists. The compression of the Los Angeles landscape is being monitored by a network of more than 250 precision global positioning system (GPS) receivers, known as the Southern California Integrated Global Positioning System Network (SCIGN), as well as by measurements from interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). Information from these two sources...

In Las Vegas, folks can't wait for the "Big One," the massive earthquake that will some day cause California to fall into the ocean. When it happens, the joke goes, Las Vegas becomes waterfront property. It's not true, of course. When the "Big One" does strike, today or a thousand years from now, California isn't likely to fall anywhere except down. Still, don't bet entirely against that notion of new waterfront property. A monster earthquake won't create it, but scientists say the passage of time and giant crustal plates might. Someday, Southern Californians might enjoy ocean views not just to...

JAKARTA (AFP) - Indonesia's president said he had been told to slaughter 1,000 sheep to prevent a repeat of the disastrous quakes that have hit his country, but he rejected the advice as superstitious nonsense. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he had been bombarded with telephone text messages, or SMS, saying sacrificial lambs could calm the seismic forces that have claimed thousands of lives. "I have received many SMSs which say: 'Mr. President, please slaughter 1,000 sheep'," Yudhoyono was quoted as saying by the state news agency Antara. Yudhoyono urged the public not to believe in superstitions, saying that earthquakes were...

President urged to slaughter sheep From correspondents in Jakarta 13-04-2005 From: Agence France-Presse INDONESIA'S president said he has been urged to slaughter 1000 sheep to prevent a repeat of the disastrous quakes that have hit his country, but he rejected the advice as superstitious nonsense. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he had been bombarded with telephone text messages, or SMS, saying sacrificial lambs could calm the seismic forces that have claimed thousands of lives. "I have received many SMSs which say: 'Mr. President, please slaughter 1000 sheep'," Yudhoyono was quoted as saying by the state news agency Antara. Yudhoyono urged the...