Southern California Changes April 10, 2013 (Blogging Again!)
Sorry about the long absence. Been working on the new Open Hazards social networking site (more about that in a later post). Time to revisit the changes in spatial contours at various locations in the world, starting with southern California. I'll be presenting some of this at the Seismological Society of America meeting next week in Salt Lake City.
Shown below are the changes in contours for earthquakes having magnitude M > 5, forecast for the next year from now. A few red boxes are shown to draw the eye towards contours that have changed. What seems to be apparent is that towards the south, the contours have thickened, while toward the north, they have thinned. Which would lead you to expect that probabilities have increased towards the south, and decreased towards the north.
Furthermore, if we draw a circle around Los Angeles of about 200 km radius, we see from the table at lower left that the probability of a magnitude M>6 earthquake is about 46% over the next 3 years.
About OpenHazards Bloggers
Steven Ward is a Research Geophysicist at the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UC Santa Cruz. He specializes in the quantification and simulation of natural hazards. Read Steve's blog.
John Rundle is a Distinguished Professor of Physics and Geology at UC Davis and the Executive Director of the APEC Collaboration for Earthquake Simulations. He chaired the Board of Advisors for the Southern California Earthquake Center from 1994 to 1996. Read John's blog.