Quake Watch 2011

reply to post by Human0815


My apologies, you had already posted - but how did you get that 2 minutes after it happened? Were you watching in GEE or was that JMO?

ETA: Looking at your location I guess it was JMO. Could you post the JMO links please.

I dont know much about earthquakes but I have recently started watching them, are things heating up worldwide? Is there anything to say that the inevitable 'big one' might happen soon, somewhere?

reply to post by WakeUpRiseUp


It already did. It was on the 11th March of Honshu. Of course it depends what you mean by "the big one". California? Cascades? Alaska? Chile? Indonesia?

I think the Japanese probably think that one was big enough to be going on with, and in any event I doubt there will be another of that size there in many years but that does not exclude a Tokai quake. (Different plate boundary)

The rest of them? Well maybe not for another few years and if we are lucky and the patterns hold good maybe not for another 20 or 30 years but you cannot second guess an earthquake and whilst the theory of stress build-up is getting better, Parkfield was a miserable failure. Other methods are too short term to be able to give any long term picture at present in my opinion.

reply to post by PuterMan


It is depending how close it is,
when it come above Mag. 4 at my Spot all my Com. will close automatically,
like a Nuclear Power Plant
(the lost of Data is expensive and mori mori annoying)

When it is far away and above Mag. 6 somewhere in Japan
NHL will transmit a Warn Signal, horrible to hear.

I posted it so quick because i was reading your Pages from the month of March,
Research, to see who can give good and accurate Information and who tell BS

The Japanese don't think this was the last "Big One",
in fact today the Japanese Government spoke about Tsunamis above 10m.
in Kanagawa, this is Kawasaki,Yokohama, Yokusuka, Miura,
Kamakura, Odawara, all this Place are under 10m and densely Populated!
I think they start to get prepared for a Hit, maybe on the Nankai Line?!!?

Originally posted by radpetey
Now would the 6.1 in Japan today be considered an aftershock of one of the bigger ones of late?

Because i have not seen any aftershocks in that area......But then again, I have not looked any where else but U.S.G.S.

Maybe that is my whole problemo!

, Japan 9.0 EQ,begin with 7.2 EQ or foreshock on 3.09.2011,and continued with many 5+ and 6+,people believe that those were aftershocks,but then on 3.11.2011 come main shock 9.0 it,s very hard to say which one is aftershock and foreshock,Japan is very dissimilar region,plus earthquakes inland are very different that those offshore,in Sumatra 2004 9.3 was different,no foreshock! Before that 7.2 ,03.09.2011 Japan,nothing only the depth maybe can give a message!

IRIS coverage of Japan is pretty useless to see these two Japan quakes, looks better on LISS, you can see both on the same graph

At 9359 km away SNZO gives a good perspective of the difference between a 6.0 and a 6.1 (JMA ML readings)

2011/11/23 19:24 UTC 37.3N 141.7E 30 km 6.0 Fukushima-ken Oki
2011/11/24 10:25 UTC 41.7N 142.8E 30 km 6.1 Urakawa Oki

Two 6+'s in the same day, this long after the big one?

Again this unstable situation shows us that there is no telling what may be coming next for Tokyo. I just can't believe that after SO much activity, big activity, the faults in Japan still have enough strain to produce those size quakes. In ONE DAY! :shk:

Add to that the mitigating, compound problem of close proximity to all those potential rupture boundaries, and it spells even more disaster. I should have named that thread "The Perpetual Final Warning to Tokyo." Cause is this ever going to calm down? It looked like the quakes were lessening in magnitude. But the earth just said "Not so fast. I am not done yet."

Magnitude
3.7
Date-Time
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 21:11:03 UTC
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 03:11:03 PM at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location
35.534°N, 96.743°W
Depth
5.2 km (3.2 miles)
Region
OKLAHOMA
Distances
28 km (17 miles) NE of Shawnee, Oklahoma
71 km (44 miles) SSE of Stillwater, Oklahoma
71 km (44 miles) W of Okmulgee, Oklahoma
71 km (44 miles) E of OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma
Location Uncertainty
horizontal +/- 6.3 km (3.9 miles); depth +/- 3 km (1.9 miles)
Parameters
NST= 21, Nph= 21, Dmin=6.7 km, Rmss=0.6 sec, Gp= 50°,
M-type="Nuttli" surface wave magnitude (mbLg), Version=5
Source
Magnitude: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Location: USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID
usc0006xhy

earthquake.usgs.gov...

The others have all been foreshocks

3.7 2011/11/24 21:11:03 35.534 -96.743 5.2 7 km ( 5 mi) NW of Prague, OK
2.7 2011/11/21 21:46:09 35.502 -96.802 5.3 9 km ( 5 mi) E of Meeker, OK
2.8 2011/11/21 07:36:23 35.675 -97.172 5.0 2 km ( 1 mi) NE of Luther, OK
2.4 2011/11/20 05:54:02 35.554 -96.737 5.0 9 km ( 5 mi) NNW of Prague, OK
3.3 2011/11/18 07:41:08 35.541 -96.762 7.4 9 km ( 6 mi) NW of Prague, OK
2.6 2011/11/18 06:12:38 35.536 -97.295 5.0 3 km ( 2 mi) S of Jones, OK

earthquake.usgs.gov...

www.youtube.com...

Oklahoma!

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstien (mangled by me)
Music by Richard Rodgers

Oklahoma, where the quakes come rolling 'cross the plain.
There's the wavin' beat, beneath your feet.
Where's the ground's still rumbling like a train.

Oklahoma, every night I say a little prayer.
Ev'ry day I gawk, just like a hawk
Hoping in the morning you're still there.

We know we belong to the land?
Is that land we belong to still grand?
And when we pray
Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We're only sayin'
You're doin' fine, Oklahoma?
Oklahoma. O.K.???

[repeat (particularly if you live in a region with fracking)]

reply to post by berkeleygal


Yup. Hopefully they haven't ALL been foreshocks.

reply to post by TrueAmerican

We'd have to look back at Banda Aceh 2004 to compare more directly (subduction zone) , but my thoughts are that being such a big quake the Japan Mag 6's are like Mag 5' aftershocks of a Mag 7,
i.e. look at Christchurch, NZ, in Oct this year they were still getting a Mag 5 aftershock 13 months after the 2010 Sept 3rd 7.1Mw

Sumatra aftershocks were still in the Mag 8 range a year later.

Still haven't had the "one magnitude less" aftershock for the 9.1 Japan yet ie a Mag 8

Originally posted by muzzy
Still haven't had the "one magnitude less" aftershock for the 9.1 Japan yet ie a Mag 8

Yeah, that's been weighing heavy in the back of my mind ever since this started on March 11th. I keep waiting for the massive aftershock that never happened. And it may not. Hope not. The big shocks they got right after may be it. None of them reached 8 I don't think though. Wasn't 7.2 the biggest so far? I forget.

ETA: On that point, it appears they found a mag 8 that happened already:

When we look at other magnitude 9s, they have many aftershocks. The average magnitude 9 has one magnitude 8. And there was one magnitude 8 that was hidden in the main earthquake data. They will have 10 magnitude 7s, 100 magnitude 6s and so on. That's the typical sequence.

I found this interesting article I don't believe I have seen before here:

www.scientificamerican.com...

And a startling thing mentioned in this same article was:

On average, about one in 20 earthquakes is a foreshock, and there's actually a chance that this 9 was a foreshock. But it's not a very high probability given this sequence of earthquakes.

Well if the 9.1 was a foreshock, God help them.

The article goes on to talk about the simple point that the stress was relieved on the northern part of the trench, but the southern part did not go, and stress has been accumulating there for a VERY long time. And I believe he is talking about the area around the right triple junction and south of there that I have been warning about as well.

So we have all this stress, still built up on the southern Japan Trench, and greatly aggravated by the 9.1. Quakes are creeping south towards Tokyo, and some have been in Tokyo itself.

I'd be a total bag of nerves if I lived there.

Originally posted by TrueAmerican

Originally posted by muzzy
Still haven't had the "one magnitude less" aftershock for the 9.1 Japan yet ie a Mag 8

Yeah, that's been weighing heavy in the back of my mind ever since this started on March 11th. I keep waiting for the massive aftershock that never happened. And it may not. Hope not. The big shocks they got right after may be it. None of them reached 8 I don't think though. Wasn't 7.2 the biggest so far? I forget.

I'd hope that the combined pressure of all of the 5.9+ quakes since and the 7.9 that struck less than hour after the main quake, would be enough. There was also a 7.7 after the 7.9 I believe.

It's something else to look back on. That's an extraordinary amount of pressure released.

Does anybody know the largest amount of pressure ever released on land? I know the 9.0+ have all been underwater megathrust, but 8+ with an epicenter on land is a chilling thought. Would a 10 just destroy a continent? I'm getting ahead of myself but I haven't ever seen a good documentary on the size/pressure differentials and it's hard to fathom how the pressure builds further than what our minds would initially process. My friend for instance thinks anything under an 8 is small, but I tried to explain underwater/land and how depth/epicenter make a huge difference.

I consider myself informed in the sense that this year alone I've done my own research and have kept tabs on quakes everyday, but I need to learn more. I may go into school on the subject in late 2013 but in the mean time all I have in reach are books and the web, but thankfully the time to inspect both thoroughly. There's something about the random behaviour, and the thought that if patterns could be found, even a few moments earlier, it could save thousands of lives.

Thanks for this thread and each contribution, btw. It's always a learning experience.

Originally posted by murkraz
Does anybody know the largest amount of pressure ever released on land? I know the 9.0+ have all been underwater megathrust, but 8+ with an epicenter on land is a chilling thought. Would a 10 just destroy a continent?

Yeah, which is why trying to wrap my mind around what happened on the New Madrid in 1812-1813 is rough. With the geology of the east, and the issue that quake propagation can be up to ten times greater than the west coast, add to that shallow depth, a massive fault, and two 8+ quakes, and it becomes possible to understand how the mighty Mississippi can get rerouted.

In that article I just linked above, they also talk about the issue that big quakes are happening in areas not normally prone to quakes. And that totally makes sense. Thousands of years of stress may manifest itself in a very bad way in the least expected places, and he says the hazard maps are proving to be incorrect to an extent.

Makes me wonder what might be in store for a place like Charleston, SC. Or Virginia. Or Oklahoma.

And on even a bigger scale, the potential for a smaller plate like the Caribbean, Cocos, or Juan De Fuca to move all at once much further and faster than ever imagined - with unimaginable, catastrophic consequences. How dare mankind make any assumptions about the scale of potentially much larger quakes than anyone has ever been able to document yet in the blink of a geologic eye that we've been here. I don't think we've seen nothing yet, as the saying goes.

Still a ways to go with Japan compared to Sumatra timewise, but interesting enough with numbers Japan has had more aftershocks in a shorter period of time, despite not having the Mag 8 yet (or perhaps instead of)
I haven't added them up or calculated the energy released for either yet but here's a graph and map comparison


Thumb

Full Size Image (too big for ATS)

Metamorphic Rocks
- result when any kind of pre-existing rock is buried deep in the Earth and subjected to high temperatures and pressures. Most metamorphic rocks show a texture that shows an alignment of sheet silicate minerals, minerals like biotite and muscovite, that gives them a layered appearance and allows them to break easily along nearly planar surfaces. Some common metamorphic rocks that we might encounter in this course are:

Slate - a fine grained metamorphic rock consisting mostly of clay minerals that breaks easily along smooth planar surfaces.

Schist - a coarser grained metamorphic rock consisting of quartz and micas that breaks along irregular wavy surfaces.

Isostatic Adjustment due to buoyancy - responsible for earthquakes, landslides, subsidence.

reply to post by Human0815

The Japanese don't think this was the last "Big One",

Certainly the last big one (mega-quake 8.5+) for that area (Honshu) for a while but of course possibly not for Tokai as I said before.

reply to post by muzzy

Still haven't had the "one magnitude less" aftershock for the 9.1 Japan yet ie a Mag 8

Statistically at least that only happens in Alaska and Indonesia and has not occurred anywhere else in the world in the past 100 years anyway.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


From that article

If it's been locked for 1,000 years, then

.

I think not, but more of that later. There is a huge amount of BS being bandied around here. (Not by you folks I hasten to add)

On the subject of how long quakes go on after the event as TA said how can there be stress still left? Also a year is the blink of an eye. IF we are talking many many cubic kilometres of material on the move in a mega-quake then the kinetic energy is massive and certainly cannot be brought to a dead stop. The mass that is moving is on or near the surface and relatively unfettered by the huge overburden that is present in a deep earthquake where much of the subsequent stress is actually transported away by elasticity, and not by fracture. I believe this is why there are many fewer aftershocks to deep quakes. My own theory so probably wrong

reply to post by TrueAmerican

And on even a bigger scale, the potential for a smaller plate like the Caribbean, Cocos, or Juan De Fuca to move all at once much further and faster than ever imagined - with unimaginable, catastrophic consequences. How dare mankind make any assumptions about the scale of potentially much larger quakes than anyone has ever been able to document yet in the blink of a geologic eye that we've been here. I don't think we've seen nothing yet, as the saying goes.

I believe you are incorrect and my reasoning is thus. There is a limitation on the size of rupture that is possible which stops at Magnitude 12 which is why Alexander Retrov was such a bullsh1tter. At magnitude 12 the rupture area is more than the circumference of the Earth so obviously it is not possible to go further than that. Even a magnitude 10 is very unlikely.

When you talk about movements this large you cross over from faulting to what basically is rapid orogenesis. Then you are looking at huge amounts of land being moved vast distances (mostly vertically) in quite possibly a relatively short space of time. If you wanted to equate that to earthquakes you could be looking at mag 9 quakes happening continuously for months or years. I am not convinced that orogenisis is a slow process. I believe it may potentially be a very rapid process, by which I mean months rather than years.

Obviously there is a form of orogenisis that is slow, and can been seen in our current world, and this results from plate movement, but I don't believe that this is what produces Alps and Himalayas fro example - at least not on it's own.

reply to post by muzzy


Japan about 500 Mega-tonnes of TNT
Indonesia (very roughly) 598 Mega-tonnes of TNT

Both based on 10 months following the event mag 4+. The Indonesia figure is a slightly wider catchment area because I don't have time to stripe it just now but it will be close enough.

Foreshocks. We don't need no stinkin' foreshocks.
The earthquake swarm in the US midwest over the last two years has been one long series of foreshocks.
Newest reoccuring area for activity. Alabama. In isolation, it's seems irrelevant. But don't forget last week's earthquakes in Georgia.

Fracking and injection are the predominating factors in cause for the midwest swarm. But not the only factors. The Utah activity is not as I first thought and only related to drilling. Utah is connected to the regional activity associated with Yellowstone. Shortly after Utah surged, we had Western Montana pick up and then Yellowstone woke up. There were quakes over a wide area of the park. Small, but it different locations. All of this as something slid under South America. The Pacific plate put pressure on the Americas.

So, there are two forces acting on the midwest. It's being squeezed. Since it is inland and mid-continental, the siesmic areas are sandwiched between the Pacific and Atlantic. The mid-Atlantic has had some groans at the rifts. And there's been some volcanic action off Spain. An island is being born. So, magma is moving dynamically.

The history is unclear. But in 1811, before the world turned upside down and rivers flowed backward, there were swarms in different areas along the Mississippi.

All politics aside, the people of the mid-west are hardy. Oklahoma has one hell of a year.

newsok.com...

But other States have had just as bad or worse. There's really too much bad voodoo to give a score and judge.
However, Arkansas stands apart because there have been the omens. On the first day of the year, the birds fell from the sky. The fish.

Along the whole length of the great rivers of the US, there has been misery this year. There's been a drought and dust storms in the west- fires. Giving the people earthquakes to worry about seems like the unfair actions of a vengeful God. Or is it a consequence of freewill? I'll stop there and leave you to debate the bigger picture.

All I see is earthquakes popping up all over the midwest and eastern states. It's been this way all year. In some areas, this has meant two years of activity.

Oh, Ohio. You don't need to worry. You're problem is unrelated. I'm sure. I'm sure your wells don't need to follow the laws of physics, and they're special.

www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com...

It's like a cartoon. Mom's on her way home, so let's sweep everything under the carpet and into the closets. We'll pretend nothing is out of sorts when she opens the door.

Originally posted by PuterMan
The mass that is moving is on or near the surface and relatively unfettered by the huge overburden that is present in a deep earthquake where much of the subsequent stress is actually transported away by elasticity, and not by fracture. I believe this is why there are many fewer aftershocks to deep quakes. My own theory so probably wrong

Well that could be right, but it may also be that aftershocks do occur with deep quakes > 300 km, but because they are so deep, the vast amount of attenuation that occurs in reaching the surface may effectively shield them from detection. At what magnitude/depth threshold this could be I have no idea, but would guess there is some kind of logarithmic scale of "non-detection." Like if a 3.0 occurred as an aftershock of a 7.5, but because it occurred at 650 km depth, it gets completely attenuated (absorbed) by the crust before it can register on seismographs.

And that would make sense, because a smaller rupture is likely to produce much less super low frequency content. It takes super low frequency to penetrate km's of crust. So add all that up, and I could see why small quakes either as aftershocks or on their own could be near impossible to detect way deep.

I believe you are incorrect and my reasoning is thus. There is a limitation on the size of rupture that is possible which stops at Magnitude 12 which is why Alexander Retrov was such a bullsh1tter. At magnitude 12 the rupture area is more than the circumference of the Earth so obviously it is not possible to go further than that. Even a magnitude 10 is very unlikely.

When you talk about movements this large you cross over from faulting to what basically is rapid orogenesis. Then you are looking at huge amounts of land being moved vast distances (mostly vertically) in quite possibly a relatively short space of time. If you wanted to equate that to earthquakes you could be looking at mag 9 quakes happening continuously for months or years. I am not convinced that orogenisis is a slow process. I believe it may potentially be a very rapid process, by which I mean months rather than years.

Obviously there is a form of orogenisis that is slow, and can been seen in our current world, and this results from plate movement, but I don't believe that this is what produces Alps and Himalayas fro example - at least not on it's own.

Well yes, of course I am talking about rapid orogenesis. When you consider that the northern NA/Caribbean Plate boundary alone is some 3000 km long, and add to that the other plate boundaries, totalling some 3.2 million square kilometers of plate area, the consequences of the entire plate moving rapidly are a tremendous cataclysm the likes of which humanity may never of witnessed yet.

Don't worry though, when all my GEE stations light up simultaneously, I will be the first to announce the end of the world- before the USGS.

reply to post by TrueAmerican

but because they are so deep, the vast amount of attenuation that occurs in reaching the surface may effectively shield them from detection

Yup, pretty much what I said - the elasticity of the intervening layers absorbs the shock.

I will be the first to announce the end of the world

Given that it is normally about 30 minutes before USGS announce anything, and then 7 days before they get it right I guess I will be in a nice warm place long before my screen pops up with the ultimate doom notice!!