Quake Watch 2011

Originally posted by PuterMan
reply to post by kdog1982

 

Neat picture. Ice crystals those are. We get that here in Ireland as well. It is the same thing that causes noctilucent clouds.

Don't know about sun dogs - I thought they were camera artefacts, but I am not a photographer so I may be wrong.

Sun dogs are also atmospheric phenomenon.

www.atoptics.co.uk...

reply to post by kdog1982


Beautiful pic, did you see more
that one sun with color at the same
time. I saw one in New Mexico
straight up in the sky with 3 suns.
Just curious as I think in order for
it to be sun dogs there has to appear to
be more than one sun.

reply to post by MoorfNZ


So I have just been informed by she who knows! (That is to say 'er wot sits beside me)

They are not camera artefacts but as you say atmospheric phenomomomen!

reply to post by PuterMan


You are correct,sir!
Ice crystals.
You see it with the moon also.

Sundogs are made commonly of plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds or, during very cold weather, by ice crystals called diamond dust drifting in the air at low levels. These crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them with a minimum deflection of 22°. If the crystals are randomly oriented, a complete ring around the sun is seen — a halo. But often, as the crystals sink through the air they become vertically aligned, so sunlight is refracted horizontally — in this case, sundogs are seen.

en.wikipedia.org...

This is more in line with an earthquake light.

Fig 1 Earthquake lights from Mt. Kimyo, Matsushiro area, Japan, September 26, 1966, 0325 (JST). Luminosity lasted 96 sec (Derr, 1973; Yasui, 1968). (© Seismological Society of America).

While reliable pictures of EQL are scarce, one example of type 1 comes from the Matsushiro earthquake swarm from 1965 to 1967, Figure 1 (Yasui, 1968, 1971; discussed in Derr, 1973).

I tried to up load the picture,but it ain't happening,so here is the link.
www.springerimages.com...

reply to post by crazydaisy

No,miss daisy,it is usually a rainbow effect.
Not an identical representation of the sun or the moon.

More like this.



I watch the skies alot,so I guess I notice them more then others.

6.0 in China

Magnitude 6.0
Date-Time

Tuesday, November 01, 2011 at 00:21:28 UTC
Tuesday, November 01, 2011 at 08:21:28 AM at epicenter

Location 43.633°N, 82.383°E
Depth 27.9 km (17.3 miles)
Region NORTHERN XINJIANG, CHINA
Distances

96 km (59 miles) ESE (106°) from Yining, Xinjiang, China
289 km (179 miles) SW (225°) from Karamay, Xinjiang, China
312 km (194 miles) WSW (257°) from Shihezi, Xinjiang, China
622 km (387 miles) E (80°) from BISHKEK (Frunze), Kyrgyzstan

Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 13.7 km (8.5 miles); depth +/- 6.6 km (4.1 miles)
Parameters NST=417, Nph=418, Dmin=351.8 km, Rmss=0.58 sec, Gp= 25°,
M-type=body wave magnitude (Mb), Version=A
Source

Magnitude: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Location: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)

Event ID usb0006h8e

earthquake.usgs.gov...

reply to post by PuterMan


Just had a look round all the data. Watch list go down to around 5.5 Mw when the tensors come out

They just did. 5.4 Mw earthquake.usgs.gov...
Only one so far but this is not going to stay as a 6.0 for long.

Closest station: MKAR.KZ..BHZ.2011.305

Does not look like a 6.0 I have to say although this is 350miles away.


Yup here we go:

Magnitude 5.4 - NORTHERN XINJIANG, CHINA
2011 November 01 00:21:28 UTC

Versión en Español

Details
Summary
Maps
Scientific & Technical

Earthquake Details

This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.

Magnitude 5.4
Date-Time

Tuesday, November 01, 2011 at 00:21:28 UTC
Tuesday, November 01, 2011 at 08:21:28 AM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location 43.633°N, 82.383°E
Depth 27.9 km (17.3 miles)
Region NORTHERN XINJIANG, CHINA
Distances 95 km (59 miles) ESE of Yining, Xinjiang, China
289 km (179 miles) SW of Karamay, Xinjiang, China
302 km (187 miles) WSW of Shihezi, Xinjiang, China
2837 km (1762 miles) WNW of BEIJING, Beijing, China
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 13.7 km (8.5 miles); depth +/- 6.6 km (4.1 miles)
Parameters NST=417, Nph=418, Dmin=351.8 km, Rmss=0.57 sec, Gp= 25°,
M-type=centroid moment magnitude (Mw), Version=A
Source

Magnitude: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Location: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)

Event ID usb0006h8e

earthquake.usgs.gov...

2 x 5.5, a 5.8 and a 6.1 within the day. Hmm that's enough for now.

[url=http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/earthquake/]26 reported injured Xinjiang[/url reported as a 5.8

Originally posted by zenius
2 x 5.5, a 5.8 and a 6.1 within the day. Hmm that's enough for now.

[url=http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/earthquake/]26 reported injured Xinjiang[/url reported as a 5.8

edit on 31-10-2011 by zenius because: (no reason given)

Yeah I wonder how much damage and or injuries they will have. Keeping an eye on earthquake-report.com... for now. They are calling both of them, "very dangerous". Time will tell.

I dunno about the rest of you, but looking at the Live Earthquake Map right now sure is a weird sight. There's like, 2 moderately sized quakes in separate locations in China, one moderately sized one in Iceland, a fairly large 3.9 on the Canary Islands, and that weird little bugger south of Australia, the 4.8.

It just.. looks weird. Like, sure, there are fault zones all over the world, and earthquakes happen in everyday, but it just has that unsettling feeling, possibly because quakes don't USUALLY occur in those areas, and to see multiple "unusual" quakes appear, although moderate in size, just feels.. weird.

reply to post by Lionhearte


The China ones always worry me simply because of the housing and the dams. The Canary Island ones are sitting on volcanoes and the one south of Australia is on a fault. The one north of that was weird as it's not on a known fault. Iceland, on a fault. Very volcanic.

There are alot of lovely colored dots on the usgs page, but energy release is a good thing...less chance of a big one.

reply to post by zenius


I was going to make note that the Canary Island and Icelandic quake were possibly volcanic related, which, I'm not sure is a good thing, especially considering there's been heavy watch on the Canary islands the last few months (?) because it's been rumbling.

Though, I disagree with your last point. I've always been under the impression that it doesn't matter if, say, California has hundreds of thousands of small quakes a day, because it simply isn't enough to relieve the pressure of a much larger 7 or 8 quake. And we're overdue for said 8 (at least, that's what they've been saying to the public for a long time, until recently that they started confessing a possible 9).

reply to post by Lionhearte


I am going to go with Lionharte on this one . . .being in SF, the "public" word seems to be:

1) small quakes do not relieve pressure and "prevent" bigger quakes
2) usually you get the "big one" first, with few precursors
3) we have been having regular events here in Berkley. Apparently we shouldn't worry unless "there is a continued flury of activity over 3-4 weeks". Not an exact quote, but from a USGS guy on NBC Bay Area

This may or may not be true . . but that is at least what we are told to believe. . . .

It's the last one that confuses the heck out of me . . . seems very vauge and someone would need something to back that up . . .a theory backed by data . . . . but my internet searches over the past week or so have failed to yield anything.

Insights on #3 (especially) appreciated.

reply to post by Lionhearte
andreply to post by SFWatcher


In looking around at the Cornell University Library e-print database, I've come across an interesting piece recently published. Your two posts have reminded me of that document.

Scaling of Seismic Memory with Earthquake Size

From the introduction:

In seismology, temporal and spatial clustering are considered important properties of seismic occurrences and, together with the Omori law (dictating aftershock timing) and the Gutenberg-Richter law (specifying the distribution of earthquake size), comprise the main starting requirements to be fulfilled in any reasonable seismic probabilistic model.

emphasis mine

So we are being told that it seems that the study of earthquake clusters (as mentioned by the USGS rep you remembered hearing, SFWatcher) is one of the most fundamental aspects of the realm of earthquake forecasting, though we are told that any substantially accurate forecast (probabilistic model) is decades away, it is nevertheless being pursued to varying degrees across the globe.

Here is where this paper begins to get interesting:

Recently, a few papers have analyzed the existence of correlations between magnitudes of subsequent earthquakes [7, 8]. Analyzing earthquakes with # greater than 30 minutes, Ref. [7] reported possible magnitude correlations in the Southern California catalog. Magni- tude correlations have often been interpreted as a spurious effect due to so called short-term aftershock incompleteness (STAI) [9].

However, recent work has also challenged this interpretation. Reference [10] reports the existence of magnitude clustering in which earthquakes of a given magnitude are more likely to occur close in time and space to other events of similar magnitude. ... Reference [8] also reports the existence of magnitude correlations and additionally demonstrates the structure of these correlations and their relationship to #Deltat and Delta#r, where the latter represents the distance between subsequent epicenters. ... Additionally, Refs. [13] and [14] find that the distribution of recurrence times strongly depends on the previous recurrence time such that small and large recurrence times tend to cluster in time. This dependence on the past is reflected in both the conditional mean recurrence time and the conditional mean residual time until the next earthquake.

Basically, it seems that clusters of earthquakes tend to repeat in a cyclic fashion. Groups of small earthquakes tend to occur in areas that have had groups of small earthquakes. Furthermore, it seems that earthquakes tend to cluster together size-wise as well.

How do they do all of this?

Since it is our hypothesis that long-range autocorrelations exist in seismic waves, we first note that long-range power-law autocorrelations are quite common in a large number of natural phenomena ranging from weather [24–26], and physiological systems [3, 27–30], to financial markets [31–37].

By utilizing functions to study other chaotic systems that have similar operations and properties when deconstructed.

What follows is a rather complex (and frankly over my head a bit, but I grasp the overall) description of ho they arrive at the time series correlations. The segment ends thus:

The results indicate the existence of at least short-term memory in the interval time series. Furthermore, we find that the mean interval increases with the seismic magnitude. However, this relationship breaks at the high end of the Richter magnitude scale M > 6.5.

It seems to be saying that there are indeed correlations for smaller sized quakes in how they behave over various time intervals, but those correlations go out the window once the quake goes over a certain size. It seems that this is the case for so many different aspects regarding larger quakes. Almost like there are one set of rules for quakes below a certain magnitude and an entirely different set of rules for quakes over that threshold.

From the summary:

We analyze seismic coda waves during earthquakes, finding long-range power-law auto-correlations in both the interval and sign time series. The sign series generally display power-law anticorrelated behavior, with anticorrelations becoming stronger with larger earthquake events, while the interval series generally display power-law correlated behavior, with correlations also becoming stronger with larger earthquake events. We also show that while the DFA autocorrelation exponent is influenced by the size of the earthquake seismic moment, it is unaffected by earthquake depth or epicentral distance. Our findings are in contrast with a standard approach which assumes independence in earthquake signals and thus have strong implications on the ongoing debate about earthquake predictability

This seems to say that there are relationships between earthquakes that can be shown and could possibly be used to help further the ability to predict future earthquakes more reliably.

So I just posted this on my Washington thread, but I would really like some other opinions as to whether these are micro quakes.

There hasn't been a recorded quake on Glacier Peak since 2007.

This is a little-known active volcano in the cascade chain (less than 50 miles from me...I discovered last year that my house is built on top of its last lahar)

AnywaysHERE is the seismo. When it expires, you can go HERE and select GPW

reply to post by Lionhearte


Well yes I agree with that to a point. I think it depends more on the tectonics of the region than the number of quakes or energy release eg. strike/slip, thrust etc and whether it is experiencing compression, shear stress or tension. Also, if enough pressure has been directed on an area and whether it suddenly gives way or if it's more like a slow grinding away. But still, some release I think is better than no release.

reply to post by zenius


And there frankly you have it. Every area is different and every grant is more money and atmosphere is the new earthquake holy grail. Memory! Pah, what complete and utter nonsense. Sometime I wonder if they educate these scientists at all.

As Zenius points out quite correctly it is a matter of the type of fault and the stress to which it is being subjected, and to a degree the amount of friction reduction that is available.

power-law autocorrelations are quite common in a large number of natural phenomena ranging from weather [24–26], and physiological systems [3, 27–30], to financial markets

from the article referenced by jadedANDcynical.

So basically as Bank Of America shares tumble we can expect more earthquakes? Remember Shamans, and magical incantations? That is how that article reads to me.

The facts are that if an earthquake area is in compression and it remains in compression then it's earthquake patterns will be similar over a period of time. That is not memory, that is simple mechanics.

As far as smaller quakes relieving pressure goes the answer is yes they do, but it depends on the number of smaller quakes obviously because of the massive energy release difference. When you consider that the complete energy release this year excluding Tohoku is of the order of just 10% of that one 9.1 you can get the picture on a smaller scale.

However take for example the Santa Cruz islands exercise I did a while back. It is easy to see there that a few Mag 6 quakes relieves the pressure and extends the period before another mag 7+

It is mechanics, not memory or magic.

Then there are swarms. Now I have difficulty imagining a scenario where tight 'on one spot' swarms are tectonic in nature simply because when a fault ruptures it does not continue to rupture in one spot. Swarms seem to me to be where an area is growing, often by the intrusion of magma, or possibly by much deeper pressure pushing on a weak spot. Swarms over an area, as for example Arkansas, where the pattern is over several km and exhibits creep are probably related to a fault but to suggest that nothing will happen until a rash of earthquakes has occurred 3 to 4 weeks before as a general indicator is rubbish.

You only get earthquakes of any larger magnitude because a fault is sticky. Some faults may require very little pressure to overcome the friction and others require a very large amount. To classify them all under one umbrella is wrong.

If I take Baja California for example, where is the 3 to 4 weeks of flurry before the big on on 4th April last year?

Here is the daily count of quakes and you can see that it tickles along at Baja's background rate for the three months before the event. No increase you can point to and say that is a swarm.

and here is the energy up to the day before since the count does not give you an ideas of the size of the quakes before the event.


If you were really desperate you might be able to make a case that the energy increased before the big event but i guarantee you can only do that in hindsight.

So that I feel demonstrates fairly clearly that at least at Baja their theory is not valid.

I think you need to put in a requisition for some more scientists. Those ones are broken.

reply to post by westcoast


Looking at it on this one I would say yes they are small quakes. GPW.UW..EHZ.2011.305

I will have a listen if i get a chance.

reply to post by PuterMan


Thanks for explaining all that. I knew you could do a much better job than I. By the way, I am 2 days away from graduating as a 'scientist' yet I feel more educated from this and related threads over the last few years than I do from 4 years at uni. I owe that to the likes of you,Puterman, and Muzzy, Moorfnz, TrueAmerican, justmike & Westcoast. Yes some scientists do wonderful work, but if they don't take a critical view point and look at the whole system, the results of their study are bound to have a larger margin of error. People such as those mentioned above, have been following quakes for long enough to see things that most of us don't.

reply to post by westcoast


I hope PM gets a chance to listen. I saw it and thought it may be weather related. I haven't looked at the weather report yet though. STAR and Newbury Caldera don't look much better than Glacier Mnt. What do you think?

Re weather: expecting 3-6 inches of snow on Baker & Rainier over the next couple of days, but couldn't find any info on today.