and behind them... there is nothing.
Jean Paul Sartre
LARGEST QUAKES -
This morning -
5.6 WEST OF MACQUARIE ISLAND
5.1 SVALBARD REGION
Yesterday -
4/11/10 -
5.5 SOUTHWEST OF SUMATRA, INDONESIA
6.3 SPAIN
5.2 RYUKYU ISLANDS, JAPAN
6.8 SOLOMON ISLANDS
5.4 NEW BRITAIN REGION, P.N.G.
5.5 TAIWAN REGION
5.2 NEAR THE COAST OF DJIBOUTI
5.0 SOUTHERN EAST PACIFIC RISE
5.8 SANTA CRUZ ISLANDS
Are earthquakes becoming more frequent? - "This is a question that every seismologist is used to. I was asked it 30 years ago. Thanks to large quakes in Haiti and Chile — not to mention 7-plus magnitude quakes in Indonesia and Baja California over the past week — I’ve been asked it a lot lately. And the answer is no. You would think this would be good news, but sometimes people seem faintly disappointed when they hear it. It’s as if a dose of disaster makes life more interesting.
It’s true that more earthquakes are recorded than used to be the case, but that’s simply because there are more monitoring stations that are able to pick up minor earthquakes that once went undetected. If we compare the average global rates of large earthquakes, we find that these are stable as far back as we can trace them. On average, we record an earthquake with a magnitude over 6 every three days or so, and over 7 at least once a month.
Why then, does it sometimes seem they are more common occurrences? There are two reasons for this. First, people notice it when earthquakes happen in populated places. A big earthquake in California is news; a big earthquake in the Southern Ocean is noticed only by seismologists. So a run of earthquakes that by chance hit populated places makes it look as though the rate has increased, even if it hasn’t.
The second reason is that in any semi-random process, you get clustering. Throw enough dice, and sometimes you’ll get several sixes in a row. People notice the clusters; they don’t notice the gaps in between. No one ever asks me during the quiet periods if earthquakes are becoming less frequent. Also, people tend to have short memories; they notice the current cluster, but don’t remember the previous one."
TROPICAL STORMS -
No current tropical cyclones.
HEAVY RAINS, SEVERE STORMS, FLOODING, LANDSLIDES -
PERU - Around 50 people have suffered injuries in Peru after part of a glacier broke off and burst the Hualcan River banks in a disaster the local governor attributed to climate change. The mass of glacial ice and rock fell into the so-called "513 lake" in the northern Ancash region, causing a ripple effect down the Hualcan, destroying 20 nearby homes. "Because of global warming the glaciers are going to detach and fall on these overflowing lakes. This is what happened today." A 2009 World Bank-published report warned Andean glaciers and the region's permanently snow-covered peaks could disappear in 20 years if no measures were taken to tackle climate change. According to the report, in the last 35 years Peru's glaciers have shrunk by 22 per cent, leading to a 12 per cent loss in the amount of fresh water reaching the coast.
