Based on a new study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in the first quarter of 2014 strong earthquakes have doubled, compared to the average since 1979. Lead study author Tom Parsons and co-author Eric Geist, both research geophysicists with USGS, stated that "even though the global earthquake rate is on the rise, the number of quakes can still be explained by random chance".
Reportedly, average rate of earthquakes larger than magnitude-7 has been gradually increasing from 10 per year in 1979, 12.5/year in 1992 and 16.7/year in 2010, this being translated to a 65% increase. The particular rise has doubled in the first three months of 2014. With the number of big earthquakes rising globally, Parsons actually hoped to track a connection between them, also encouraged by earlier findings that seismic waves generated from magnitude-8 and magnitude-9 earthquakes can propagate and trigger small shakes elsewhere. As he also stated in an e-mail interview on Live Science's Our Amazing Planet: "As our group has been interested in the ability of an earthquake to affect others at a global scale, we wondered if we were seeing it happening. I really expected we would see evidence of something we couldn't explain by randomness". But the study failed to prove such a hypothesis, following the outcome of previous studies that have attempted to establish a connection between the occurrence of strong earthquakes.
The study findings were published online June 21 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Source: CBSnews
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