New way of measuring earthquake patterns could reveal 'Holy Grail' of when and where they will strike

Yahoo News UK
EMBARGOED UNTIL: 21 June 2019, 10:00 BST (05.00 ET) Earthquake damage in the center of Amatrice, Italy, in 2016. See National News story NNquakes. A new way of measuring earthquakes may unlock the 'holy grail' of where and when they will strike, researchers said. Scientists have long struggled to identify patterns for earthquakes leading to suggestions they strike at random. But new evidence revealed the majority of earthquakes strike fault lines which are under stress built up from centuries of past tremors. Lead researcher Dr Zoë Mildon, lecturer in Earth Sciences at the University of Plymouth, said: “Earthquakes are caused by rock sliding past each other along fault lines which causes the forces and stress in the surrounding rocks to change after a big earthquake.
A new way of measuring earthquakes may unlock the 'holy grail' of where and when they will strike, researchers have said (Picture: SWNS)

A new way of measuring earthquakes could reveal where and when they will strike, scientists have suggested.

Researchers said their work looking at fault lines could help unlock the ‘holy grail’ of predicting earthquakes.

They combined evidence from areas including Italy’s central Apennines region, an area hit by centuries’ of quakes, with state-of-the-art modelling to analyse patterns of earthquakes - finding that 97% of the earthquakes between 1703 and 2016 occurred on faults ‘stressed’ by previous tremors.

Lead researcher Dr Zoë Mildon, lecturer in Earth Sciences at the University of Plymouth, said: “Earthquakes are caused by rock sliding past each other along fault lines which causes the forces and stress in the surrounding rocks to change after a big earthquake.

“It is often assumed that the nearest fault to a particular earthquake will be the next to rupture. However, our study shows this is never the case.”

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Dr Mildon and colleagues from UCL, Birkbeck, University of London and Tohoku University in Japan, looked at records of 700 years of earthquakes in the Apennines region, including quakes in the town of Amatrice and Norcia in 2016, which left almost 300 people dead.

Their study, published in Nature Communications and said to demonstrate a ‘step change’ in looking at why earthquakes are triggered, suggests that the majority strike fault lines which are under stress built up from centuries of past tremors.

The researchers looked at fault lines including this one in the Maiella National Park in southern Abruzzo, which last moved in 1706. (Picture: SWNS)
The researchers looked at fault lines including this one in the Maiella National Park in southern Abruzzo, which last moved in 1706. (Picture: SWNS)

Dr Mildon said: "Earthquakes are hugely destructive to both people and property, and the Holy Grail of earthquake science would be to predict where they are going to happen and when.

"We are a very long way from that, and indeed it may never be possible to accurately predict the location, time and size of future earthquakes.

“Our research, however, could be a starting point in helping us develop better forecasts of which fault lines might be more susceptible based on previous tremors."