Earthquakes

[Segilla]

Is there any evidence to show that earthquakes have a knock-on effect with other adjacent plates?
Is there any kind of pattern to the severe recent ones compared with earlier years?

[Count-A-Strong]

Earthquakes cannot be predicted, but they have some patterns. Sometimes foreshocks precede quakes, though they look just like ordinary quakes. But every large event has a cluster of smaller aftershocks, which follow well-known statistics and can be forecasted.

Plate tectonics successfully explains where earthquakes are likely to occur. Given good geologic mapping and a long history of observations, quakes can be forecasted in a general sense, and hazard maps can be made showing what degree of shaking a given place can expect over the average life of a building.

Seismologists are making and testing theories of earthquake prediction. Experimental forecasts are beginning to show modest but significant success at pointing out impending seismicity over periods of months. These scientific triumphs are many years from practical use.

[rov1100]

///Is there any evidence to show that earthquakes have a knock-on effect with other adjacent plates?///

Not according to my daily newspaper today. That's why its almost impossible to predict a future catastrophe. Japan has always been on a fault line and has regular but smaller earthquakes than this recent one. Knowing this they should have been better prepared especially with the siting of the Nuclear power stations not just for the earthquake but the following Tsunami. Residents there said they were waiting for the big one and it duly obliged them although they could do nothing about it.

[DTCwordfan]

Despite seismology having been born with the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon that did massive damage (again a Tsunami and fire), the science is still very young - scientists are indeed trying to understand knock on effects in the plates so they can become more predictive.....

and also answer questions whether major movements have effect on things like magnetic pole reversal.

Useless info for you from a previous thread this lunch time. Some one asked where the Antipodean point is to Japan....I based this off Tokyo and it happens to be Buenos Airies - which, of course, just happens to be on the River Plate.......rather ironic I thought.

[Segilla]

Thanks for both answers. I imagine the observations timescale of insufficient yet to be able to determine patterns.

I enjoyed the antipodean item.

[Segilla]

Correction; all three answers!