Why has the EQ count gone mental on USGS?

I know this has probably been discussed to death already, but I just can;t be bothered searching for it.

Just to sumarise. I have been watching the USGS site for some years. And I have rarely seen the weekly count on the world map rise above 300.

Today we are on 1499 in this last week.

With the majority of these attributed to the 35N 115W 10 degree map in which there are current;y 1336 in this last week!!

Soooo that means that currently there are 163 EQs worldwide including the 7+ in Indonesia (similar size to the baja) and the continuing rumblings in Chile. which is well within normal activity parameters as far as I have seen from watching this site for some years.

So the question is just what the hell happening and is still happening down in the Baja.

I saw something saying that this could just be a volcanic swarm, But if this is the case would the USGS site not be swamped with this sort of thing all the time? But the map is supposed to only show EQs above 2.5 so if this is due to volcanic activity then could this be a precursor to one huge eruption?

or is it that the pacific plate / N American / and Nazca plate is doing some very strange things

Anyone with any insight???? as this is confuddling the buggery out of me!




[edit on 11/404/1010 by JakiusFogg]

[edit on 11/404/1010 by JakiusFogg]

Nothing out of the ordinary as of yet

we're 1/3 through the year and we have 1/3 the average quakes

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1a70cd15bb81.jpg[/atsimg]

earthquake.usgs.gov...

Currently the USA quakes/aftershocks resulting from the Baja 7.7 are still ongoing and hence why there are so many quakes being listed.

The other day we had over 3,000 quakes showing for just the California/Mexico area of the USA.

Check out the Quake Watch thread to keep an eye on actual activity

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Discotech

What is a "No Magnitude" quake

...and why were there only 20 of them in '09 and so many in the previous years. This confuses me

reply to post by UberL33t


I have no idea, I didn't even notice it said "no magnitude" until you pointed it out, can't find anything on USGS which points to what one might be either, perhaps someone else knows ? Or maybe they're quakes which have been reclassed to mine/quarry blasts ?

I also thought it might have been those reclassified to mine blast explosions (which USGS also track) but there don't seem to be as many mine entries as there are zero mags.

earthquake.usgs.gov...

I can only think they are 0.0x events?

reply to post by Discotech


How can you say that this is not out of the ordinary

Did Haiti have 1000+ aftershock inside a week, or Okinawa, or Chile, or Indonesia, or any of the 7 Mag EQs that have happened this year.

In the grand scheme of things this may be "inside the total numbers" for a normal year, but I have never seen anything like this resulting from one single event in all the years I have been monitoring USGS.

Do you now find his strange that there are over 1000 aftershocks all +2.5 in one week

and as for the 3000 in the US that's only because the US maps log every little thing. try the world map, it only logs significant tremors and it is this to which I am referring.

Originally posted by JakiusFogg
but I have never seen anything like this resulting from one single event in all the years I have been monitoring USGS.

If you've monitored USGS for years then you'll know that they don't report anything below 4.5 outside of the states, so there could well have been thousands of aftershocks (I know myself there was a crapload of 4.5+ aftershocks for the Chile quake) that were below 4.5 and thus were never reported on USGS

Infact I just checked and there were 458 REPORTED Aftershocks for Chile

earthquake.usgs.gov...,%20Chile

Haiti had 42 reported Aftershocks

earthquake.usgs.gov...

And apparantly only 708 reported Aftershocks for the Baja quake

So you see, nothing out of the ordinary

reply to post by Discotech


Thank you for this but I have been researching something else and have been googling and trawling through articles and boards. By boards I mean Seismology, Volcanology and geology boards, there does seem to be alot of concern Re: the increased number of 5.0+ EQs in the first quarter of this year. I haven't looked at this in detail yet as I am busy with something else but there are also statistics freely available out there which say the complete opposite. You know what they say about Stats: Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

The media is now talking about this increase in EQ's. I listened to an interview on local radio with a seismologist. He agreed there is an increase in EQs so far this year but doesn't know whether this trend will continue for the rest of the year and wouldn't speculate at all (and he was pushed) as to why it is believed the increase is happening now.
He did say that there are concerns about California and the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean surprised me as I have heard others mention Tokyo but then that is why I am an armchair observer and not a seismologist!

Originally posted by Discotech
Nothing out of the ordinary as of yet

we're 1/3 through the year and we have 1/3 the average quakes

There are some people, who like you, claim "there is nothing out of the ordinary, but that isn't true sorry to say.

Some people LOVE to claim that because there weren't as many seismic stations 20 years ago, that this is the reason why there is such an increase. But that is nothing more than a red herring because the fact that there weren't as many seismic stations 20 years ago, it doesn't mean there has been the same amount of earthquakes.

Then you get others who LOVE to show only earthquakes of magnitute 7 or higher...but it seems that these people believe that an increase in smaller earthquakes "it's just of no consequence", when that is far from the truth.

You want to know if there has been an increase in earthquakes and don't want to rely on TPTB attemps to hide this fact? Check out, and inform yourself to the fact that fluctuations in the magnetic field of the Sun and the Earth have been linked to increases in earthquakes.

We know as a matter of fact that since 1840 the Earths magnetic field has been weakening.

We also know as a matter of fact that the Sun's activity in the past 100 years or so has been higher than at any time in the past 1,000 years or more.

We know that fluctuations in the magnetic field in the Sun, and Earth's own magnetic field fluctuations do have an effect on earthquakes.

Knowing this alone it is obvious that worldwide earthquakes have been at an increase.

BTW, not too long ago we learned that just like the IPCC, the UN, and the AGW scientists have been scamming the world, NASA, through Hansen, has also been fudgeting the data, and cherry picking data sources and disregarding anything that would not back the AGW scam... But hey you go ahead and keep believing the scammers, and not what the facts actually say....

[edit on 12-4-2010 by ElectricUniverse]

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


I have followed that information for several years and find it quite true, and there are others that still don't believe it. But if one follows the facts long enough they might find more truth then they can swollow.

I also know electric universe is a theory and not just your name.

[edit on 12-4-2010 by OLD HIPPY DUDE]

I posted this in another thread...it's simple...read the header on the USGS website:

Latest Earthquakes in the World - Past 7 days

Latest Earthquakes Magnitude 2.5 or Greater in the United States and Adjacent Areas and Magnitude 4.5 or Greater in the Rest of the World - Last 7 days

now go count all of those earthquakes (you can just eyeball it) and tell me how many are OVER 4.5?

The reason you are seeing more is because, as the USGS site clearly states...they provide EQ data on 2.5 or greater in the US and adjacent areas

If they provided 2.5 or greater for the entire planet...then you would see equivalent activity daily.

[edit on 12-4-2010 by Aggie Man]

I don't think it's correct to say that we're not having an inordinately high earthquake count so far this year - at least in comparison to the previous decade.

Here is a graph I made of the 5.0+ richter scale earthquake figures from the last ten years ( as recorded by the USGS ), and I've included the projected figure for 2010, based on figures to date - I just hope I've worked out the figures on this graph correctly !

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/95d7f90c6fb0c0e3.jpg[/atsimg]


Also here is the % increase from each of the past 10 years that the the projected figure shows:

2000 +80.4%
2001 +99.6%
2002 +102.5%
2003 +100.0%
2004 +62.4%
2005 +47.3%
2006 +45.6%
2007 +19.6%
2008 +39.4%
2009 +44.1%


I don't know what's going on with these figures, and it may just be that a lot of this year's earthquake activity has coincidentally occured within the first three/four months of the year, thus skewering the projected figure.
But this year's count is certainly out of the ordinary compared to the previous decade.
All this is providing that I haven't messed up the figures, which is entirely plausible !

reply to post by Benji1999

Predicting earthquake numbers based on past performance is a very iffy proposition.
Based on the number of earthquakes of 7.0 and greater since 1900, one could seem to predict fewer in the coming years.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9f995b9df942.png[/atsimg]

Based on your chart, the past two years could show that we are in for a decreasing number of earthquakes but because of the spike in 2007 you predict a radical increase.
What about that spike in 1944, or 1957, or 1968? The "trend" did not continue. In fact, following most of the spikes, an immediate drop in frequency is seen.


[edit on 4/12/2010 by Phage]

reply to post by Phage


Sorry Phage but once again you are wrong... I know that you love to make posts based only on your "already preconceived ideas" and you love to post "your already preconceived ideas" as proof.... but that's not how it works Phage... It doesn't matter how many members cheer for you wrongly, you are still wrong.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 12-4-2010 by ElectricUniverse]

reply to post by Phage


Yes, I'm not necessarily suggesting that this year's projected figure is indicative of a long-term upward trend.
I am very much a layman ( who's attempting to educate himself more ! ) when it comes to geology and such, so I am not attempting to make any claim on this subject one way or another, other than looking at the rudimentary statistics that are at hand.
My graph was intended more to show that we are quite far above the usual level of 5.0+ earthquakes that we saw in the last decade, and the graph was more to show the comparison between previous years, rather than to indicate any particular trend.
It is just that I see many posts on ATS saying that this year's earthquake count is average, and that people only think it's higher than normal because of more high-profile media coverage.
The projected figure for this year does appear to stand out when compared to recent years major earthquake activity.

reply to post by Benji1999

I don't think earthquakes of 5.0 - 6.0. are usually considered "major earthquakes".
If you look at the past decade of 6.0 quakes you will see quite a different picture.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/5f7fd526514e.gif[/atsimg]

When considered lower magnitude earthquakes, which cannot be located as easily as strong earthquakes, it is also important to consider the number of recording stations. It is interesting to note that in the past decade some 7,500+ stations have been added to the various earthquake recording networks around the world. There is little doubt that this increase in the ability to locate weaker earthquakes contributes to the apparent increase in numbers.
www.iris.edu...

reply to post by Phage


''Major earthquakes'' was probably the wrong term, but I was going by the USGS deciding 4.5+ as worth reporting on.
I only chose 5.0+ because of the discrepancies with the figures since 2009, when they stopped reporting most of the 4.5- earthquakes outside the USA...

I'm sure the number of recording stations is a factor, but it can't be known how much of the increases is because of that.






[edit on 12-4-2010 by Benji1999]

Originally posted by Benji1999
All this is providing that I haven't messed up the figures, which is entirely plausible !

You have messed up the figures, because you have 2,716 5.0+ quakes for 2010

USGS has the quakes worldwide listed at earthquake.usgs.gov... (numbers subject to change if any 5.0+ quakes happen since I posted these numbers)

5.0 to 5.9 - 702
6.0 to 6.9 - 55
7.0 to 7.9 - 5
8.0+ - 1

Looking at the numbers alone you can see it is nowhere near 2,716, the actual number is 763 so unless you've used different figures (can you provide the links ?) then you've quite clearly messed the figures up and I have no idea how you've managed to count up over 2,000 quakes when there's not even been 1,000 so far this year

[edit on 13/4/10 by Discotech]

reply to post by Discotech



Hello Discotech.

My figure is a projected figure based on the number that we've had so far.
We've had 103 days of the year so far ( roughly 28% of the year ), and we've had 763 5.0+ earthquakes, which gives a projected figure of about 2,700.

Of course, it won't necessarily pan out like that evenly over the rest of the year, as like I've said, a lot of this year's major earthquake activity could have coincidentally occurred within the first four months of this year.