UPDATED 10/23/11: Earthquake activity from 1990-2011 charted. Pin for education!

Holy f***! There's actually some real research happening on this site (not that I'd find pure conjecture any less fascinating but still). Nice one! :):bump:

Very nice work OP and thanks

A and five stars

I'll see what I can do. Don't expect it tomorrow though :-p



I didn't do that because I'd already seen a graph showing seismic energy output increasing exponentially. That graph is what encouraged me to do these graphs. I wanted to confirm for myself the general idea that there are more powerful earthquakes occurring. However, if you simply recognize the fact that energy output increases exponentially with seismic magnitude, then it is undeniable that if there are increasing amounts of powerful earthquakes(which clearly there are), seismic energy released will also will go up exponentially.

The graph I saw showing seismic energy increases was in a book called Extinction Protocol. I don't agree with his spiritual conclusions about the future but I think his overlying theory for what is causing the climate change is pretty compelling.



Those possible responses are PRECISELY the reason why I excluded the weaker magnitude earthquakes and stuck to 4.0+ and why I stuck to a 1990-2011 time frame. Certainly there is room for error in these graphs, but to allude to them being completely misleading is itself, well, misleading!



Mmmmm, sort of, but not really. For example, they would only truly be misleading if I included all the 5.0-10.0 activity for one year and then only included 6.0-10.0 activity for the previous year, which is not what I did. So while the 5.0-10.0 graph is including the 7.0s, it is doing that for every single year. So while the number of earthquakes is a tiny bit higher, the scale remains the same year to year. Make sense?

The reason I did it that way was to eliminate some of the probability of chance. Smaller sample sizes are more prone to error. Ultimately we're talking about only a couple hundred earthquakes being added to the 5.0-10.0 graph(vs the 5.0-5.99 graph you're proposing) which otherwise would still include 2000-2500 5.0-5.99 earthquakes. And again, this is being done every year, not just some. So the upward trend remains completely unchanged! Sorry, I know that was a lot of word vomit. Ultimately I knew some people would cast doubt on the 6.0-10.0 and 7.0-10.0 graphs because of their small sample size. I didn't want to exclude those earthquake's impact though, since they are the most powerful. The best way to do that was to make sure they were included in the 5.0-10.0 chart.

Haven't we added more earth quake data collecting machines over the years?

How would that affect your data?

Aren't there a lot of factors to consider to determine whether or not there was an earthquake increase or we are just collecting more information about more earthquakes as a function of time?

See my most recent response. Someone asked a similar question. I did it this way so that the, arguably, most important graph(5.0-10.0) would include the more powerful earthquakes. In statistics you have to worry about sample sizes. The smaller the sample size, the more chance for inaccuracy. If you look at the 7.0-10.0 graph for example, each year ranges from just a few earthquakes to maybe 20. That is why I stated this graph has the highest chance for error. It felt wrong to simply ignore these earthquakes though, since they release the most energy. That is why I did the 5.0-10, 6.0-10, 7.0-10. Year over year, doing it this way changes absolutely nothing in the overall trends.

Yes, which is why I excluded the weaker 0-4.0 earthquakes which would not normally have been picked up in the past and why I limited the time range from 1990-2011. I address this question in my original post.

Absolutely. Could you please share your data? I have a little spreadsheet of the A index for the last solar cycle.

Thanks. :)

I mean it's already shared by IRIS and such but you've probably got everything in a neat file or something?

I hate querying stuff, computers should just tell me what I want to know without me specifying it by now.

:)

Thanks for sharing.

Scrary but on the good side small earthquakes are less frequents.

Sure, what's a site I can upload a openoffice(compatible with microsoft word, etc) file without having to create an account, etc?

here is what i use

[link to www.wolton.net]

they still are.

Thanks!

[link to www.zshare.net]

explain how earthquakes effect the climate?

Amazing-this shows a significant difference.This does not look good but I expected this. It has just felt like earthquakes have been non stop and increasing in intensity.

Great post OP

A+


You will also find climbing charts with...

tsunamis
floods
volcanoes
tornadoes
hail
drought
snow
CMEs
Flares
Solar Filaments
others

Excellent!

I didn't say they affect the climate. I said they are a sign of climate change. Obviously it is much more complicated than this, but think of things in the simplest terms...Everything in the universe vibrates to some degree. It's a universal truth. To my understanding, in terms of energy, the more energy(like heat), the faster something is going to vibrate. The earth is being bombarded by increasing amounts of energy(like cosmic rays from outside the solar system) and has slowly been warming up(set to the side completely whether man is involved or not). It seems abundantly clear to me that an increase in energy and heat on Earth will lead to an increase in the basic vibration of everything on the planet and thus the planet itself will vibrate more.

But lets say I am wrong in this idea...It still doesn't change the numbers :-)

There is a wealth of information out there about possible causes to our climate change that come from outside the planet. I'd suggest googling things like the sun's heliosphere, magnetosphere, solar wind pressure, earth's magnetosphere, Atlantic anomaly, and cosmic ray exposure.

The problems Earth is experiencing are not exclusive to Earth. Our solar system is undergoing changes. Some changes are obvious, others are not so obvious. I've started looking in to what NASA calls 'the local fluff'. I think there could be a link between it and the shrinking of the sun's heliosphere and subsequent increase in cosmic ray bombardment of Earth.

Sorry, started chasing rabbits...

Last Edited by Mojofabulous on 08/04/2011 01:35 AM

Thanks for the link, here you go..
.ppt version: [link to www.zshare.net]

.odp version: [link to www.zshare.net]

I'm not sure how useful these files will be for you though. This isn't in a excel type spreadsheet format with individual earthquakes listed by timestamp. This is information I gathered by systematically searching for total number of earthquakes in a timeframe(by year). I'm sure IRIS has a excel-type database you could use, that just isn't how I gathered the data.

Cheers and good luck,

Blah this doesnt really show nothing all it shows is we have had a spike in the last few yrs . But if you look back in time you see the same kind of spike over the yrs and if you look at say the last 25 yrs

2011- 1986 22 EQs 8.0 or higher

1986 - 1961 16 EQs 8.0 or higher

1961 - 1936 22 EQs 8.0 or higher

1936 - 1911 18 EQs 8.0 or higher

And the 2 biggest ones ever recorded were a 9.5 in 1960 and a 9.2 in 1964.

As for the smaller ones you cant really look at because they didnt have the resources they do now.

Are we in a uptick sure but we have seen these very same upticks in our very recent history

[link to earthquake.usgs.gov]

You are looking at a miniscule subset of numbers with the highest probability of inaccuracy and using it to prove everything is business as usual. Your post shows a total of 78 earthquakes. Statistically, it is absolutely impossible to show any significance in respect to anything whatsoever with those numbers. That is precisely why I built the graphs the way I did while simultaneously acknowledging that the graphs for the strongest earthquakes are the ones with the greatest probability of error.

Am I denying that something like what is happening today could have happened in the past? No! I stated very clearly in my original post that is not what I believe. The fact is, it is impossible to know if the last few years are unprecedented because we don't have records to compare with. That doesn't mean today's activity is irrelevant. It means we are in uncharted waters that are potentially very dangerous.

Note I never once said the earth is going to explode tomorrow :-)

great post

Interesting, and a for all your hard work:)

Thanks again OP.

Earth-cracking DOOMAGE... coming to a city near YOU

way to go op.. you laid the smack down on him..