Scientists warned that Ridgecrest earthquakes last year in Southern California increased the risk of a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault.
Earthquakes, catastrophe model company Temblor warn, have emphasized the Garlock fault that links the Ridgecrest faults to the San Andreas fault. In a blog post, Tremor CEO Ross Stein and Shinji Toda of Tohoku University explained that if the Garlock fault were to break into a major shock, “it would likely trigger an earthquake in San Andreas north of Los Angeles “
An article about the research has been published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
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“In our study, we developed a new method for forecasting future seismicity,” Stein and Toda wrote in the publication. “These predictions are not earthquake predictions, which have so far been impossible. Rather, they are probabilistic, framed in the language of chance. We use past seismicity, the stress imparted by recent large and moderate earthquakes, and the equations that govern how fault friction varies over time and space (‘state velocity friction’) to estimate the probability of future earthquakes of different sizes. “
The 9.3-mile deep San Andreas fault in California is one of the longest and most active in the world. This computer-generated image has been enhanced to show its features: illustration.
(SRTM, JPL, NASA)
The experts used machine learning technology in their analysis, which estimates a 2.3 percent chance of a magnitude 7.7 Garlock Fault breakout in the next year. “This is 100 times greater than your annual chances in the ‘UCERF3’ reference model for California, which is jointly issued by the [U.S. Geological Survey], the Southern California Earthquake Center and the California Geological Survey, ”wrote Stein and Toda.
Scientists estimate that if the Garlock Fault broke within approximately 30 miles of its junction with the San Andreas Fault, “it would increase the probability of a San Andreas breakout extending to the southeast, in the so-called ‘Mojave section’ by a factor of approximately 150 “.
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“That translates to a 50/50 probability of a San Andreas Mojave section rupture (with a range, 25 percent-67 percent), either immediately after a Garlock earthquake or after some delay.” they added.
Part of the visible section of the San Andreas fault.
(AP)
In this context, they estimate that the net probability of a major earthquake in San Andreas in the next 12 months is 1.15 percent. “Although small, this probability is 3.5-5.0 times greater than the annual probability of a major San Andreas earthquake in the ‘UCERF3’ reference model for California,” they added.
Given the small probability of a major San Andreas earthquake in the next year, scientists say that no one should panic.
“But, as we’ve seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, low-probability chain reaction events occur in nature, and when they do, their consequences can be great,” they explained. “It is the responsibility of scientists to assess the probability of such events and then bring them to the attention of the public and decision makers.”
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Seismologist Lucy Jones, who was not involved in the study, described the analysis as “elegant” in a tweet, but added that “it is a reason to trigger an earthquake that is not consensus.”
“The possibility of a San Andreas earthquake AT ANY TIME should either be part of your planning or it shouldn’t be in California,” he wrote, in another tweet.
Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
