Is it possible to have a world wide earthquake

Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake. We do not know how, and we do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future. USGS scientists can only calculate the probability that a significant earthquake will occur in a specific area within a certain number of years.

An earthquake prediction must Are earthquakes associated with variations in the geomagnetic field? Electromagnetic variations have been observed after earthquakes, but despite decades of work, there is no convincing evidence of electromagnetic precursors to earthquakes. It is worth acknowledging that geophysicists would actually love to demonstrate the reality of such precursors, especially if they could be used for reliably predicting Filter Total Items: 7.

Year Published: Earthquake outlook for the San Francisco Bay region — Using information from recent earthquakes, improved mapping of active faults, and a new model for estimating earthquake probabilities, the Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities updated the year earthquake forecast for California.

View Citation. Aagaard, B. Geological Survey Fact Sheet —, 6 p. Year Published: Fundamental questions of earthquake statistics, source behavior, and the estimation of earthquake probabilities from possible foreshocks Estimates of the probability that an ML 4.

Michael, Andrew J. Fundamental questions of earthquake statistics, source behavior, and the estimation of earthquake probabilities from possible foreshocks; ; Article; Journal; Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America; Michael, Andrew J.

Year Published: Earthquake hazard in the New Madrid Seismic Zone remains a concern There is broad agreement in the scientific community that a continuing concern exists for a major destructive earthquake in the New Madrid seismic zone.

Frankel, A. Brocher, Thomas M. Wheeler, R. Kerr, R. Filter Total Items: 4. Date published: June 26, Attribution: Science Application for Risk Reduction. Date published: February 10, Date published: January 4, Date published: May 28, Filter Total Items: 9.

List Grid. Smaller scale event of this type happened in during Gobi-Altay earthquake when whole mountain ridge moved. If core some how collapse, because of change of crystallic structure of iron in it or because of possible explosion of hypothetical natural uranium nuclear reactor in it.

Blockbusters bombs in WW2 was used to create miniquakes as its main killing effect, and they explode after they penetrate ground. Large nukes may be used the same way, but super earthquake requires energy which is beyond current power of nukes on several orders of magnitude. Many superbombs may be needed to create superquake. I read about suggestions that oceanic rifts expand not gradually but in large jumps.

This middle oceanic rifts creates new oceanic floor. Boiling of water trapped into the rift and contacted with magma may also contribute to explosive zip style rapture of the rifts.

But this idea may be from fridge science catastrophism so should be taken with caution. Large scale eruptions like the Kimberlitic tube explosion would also produce earthquake which will be felt on all earthquake, but not uniformly. But they must be much stronger than Krakatoa explosion in Superquakes effects: 1. Superquake surely will come with megatsunami which will result in most damage. Supertsunami may be miles high in some areas and scenarios.

Tsunamis may have different ethology, for example resonance may play a role or change of speed of rotation of the Earth. Supersonic impact waves and high frequency vibration. Superquake could come with unusual patterns of wavering, which are typically dissipate in soil or not appear.

A long term increase in earthquake activity would require an increase in the Earth's internal energy supply, which would be difficult to account for. It is true that our ability to detect and measure earthquakes has improved over the last few decades due to huge increases in the number of seismograph stations that record earthquakes. However, this mainly affects our ability to detect smaller earthquakes. Larger earthquakes occur less frequently than smaller ones.

This relationship is exponential, i. There are a number of reasons why it might seem as if we are experiencing more earthquakes.

Earthquakes in populated places are far more noticed than the many that occur in remote regions, so when, by chance, a run of earthquakes hit population centres, it appears that the number of events has increased. Also, there are more people at risk.

Population increases mean there are more people than ever in earthquake prone regions. So although the number of earthquakes remains the same the impact increases. Earthquake clustering. It accounts for multiple types of seismic waves, drawing on more precise instruments and better computing to provide a reliable measuring stick to compare seismic events.

But this is still a proxy for the size of the earthquake. And with only indirect measurements, it can take up to a year to decipher the scale of an event, like the Indian Ocean earthquake, said Marine Denolle, an earthquake researcher at Harvard University.

This is a metric that measures how the speed and direction of the ground changes and has proven the most useful for engineers. So, yes, earthquake scales have gotten a lot more complicated and specific over time. Predicting earthquakes is a touchy issue for scientists, in part because it has long been a game of con artists and pseudoscientists who claim to be able to forecast earthquakes.

Their declarations have, of course, withered under scrutiny. Scientists do have a good sense of where earthquakes could happen. Using historical records and geologic measurements, they can highlight potential seismic hot spots and the kinds of tremors they face.

Forecasting earthquakes would require high-resolution measurements deep underground over the course of decades, if not longer, coupled with sophisticated simulations. So there are ultimately too many variables at play and too few tools to analyze them in a meaningful way. On shorter time scales, texts and tweets can actually race ahead of seismic waves. In the Tohoku earthquake in Japan, for example, warnings from near the epicenter reached Tokyo miles away, buying residents about a minute of warning time.

Many countries are now setting up warning systems to harness modern electronic communications to detect tremors and transmit alerts ahead of shaking ground, buying a few precious minutes to seek shelter. Meanwhile, after a large earthquake, aftershocks often rock the afflicted region.

But even this caution has had consequences. Six days after the scientists convened to assess the risk, a large quake struck and killed people. Those convictions were later overturned and the ordeal has become a case study for how scientists convey uncertainty and risk to the public. Reports of animals acting strange ahead of earthquakes date back to ancient Greece.

But a useful pattern remains elusive. The gargantuan expansion of hydraulic fracturing across the United States has left an earthquake epidemic in its wake. Scientists say the injected water makes it easier for rocks to slide past each other.

This is up from an average of two earthquakes per year of magnitude 2. Humans are causing earthquakes another way, too: Rapidly drawing water from underground reservoirs has also been shown to cause quakes in cities like Jakarta, Denolle said.

As average temperatures rise, massive ice sheets are melting, shifting billions of tons of water from exposed land into the ocean and allowing land masses to rebound. Denolle agreed that this could be a mechanism, but if there is any impact from climate change on earthquakes, she says she suspects it will be very small.