“There’s a volcano in Alaska, Pavlov, that only erupts during the autumn and winter. The 10cm or 15cm rise in sea level during the winter months, when low pressure comes over, is enough to bend the crust and squeeze magma out. That’s an example of how tiny a change you need,” he said.
Meanwhile, geologists modelling the effect of retreating ice sheets in the northern hemisphere predict more volcanic activity as pressure is released on fault lines. McGuire points to three eruptions in five years in Iceland – “You can’t say that’s statistical proof but … it makes you think.”
There is a 99.9 percent chance of a magnitude-5 or greater earthquake striking within three years in the greater Los Angeles area, where a similar sized temblor caused more than $12 million in damage last year, according to a study by NASA and university researchers.
The study released Tuesday was based on Global Positioning System and airborne radar measurements of how the Earth's crust was deformed by the magnitude-5.1 quake on March 28, 2014, in La Habra, about 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The damage included broken water mains and cracked pavement.
By comparison, in 1994 the magnitude-6.7 Northridge earthquake left $25 billion in damage, caused dozens of deaths and injured 9,000 people.
The study looked at a 62-mile radius around the La Habra epicenter. Researchers observed shallow movements of the ground, took into account a deficit in the number of earthquakes expected there and calculated how much strain may remain in deeper faults that are still locked.
While the magnitude-5 quake was found to be extremely likely by April 1, 2018, one of magnitude-6 or higher was pegged at just 35 percent and the largest potential quake was estimated at 6.3.
Study leader Andrea Donnellan, a geophysicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the research is not a prediction. "It's a statistical probability that we computed," she said in an interview.
The U.S. Geological Survey took issue with the study, asserting that it was unclear how the study derived its numbers and that the accepted probability is 85 percent.
Responding to the criticism, Donnellan said the study's references to other scientific papers would allow other researchers to reconstruct the process.
According to the most recent Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, which was published in March and is the basis for the agency's National Seismic Hazard Maps, the Southern California region has a 100 percent chance of one or more magnitude-5 or larger quakes and a 93 percent chance of a 6.7 jolt during the next 30 years.
... these readings were between 50 and 265 times above typical background CO levels of about 150 parts per billion and up to twelve times higher than second highest peak readings over polluted regions of China during the same period.
Human-based carbon monoxide sources are not generally known to produce spike readings so high and so wide-ranging. Nor are wildfires (of which there were no reports for this region). The primary suspect for this preliminary observation, therefore, is geological.
As the spike occurs over large fault lines, volcanoes, and above other active geological features along the US and Canadian West, it appears that activity within these features may have produced a brief if intense burp of this gas. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) readings — another geological gas — were also elevated, with peak readings again appearing in Southwestern California.
[An study in India showed] a large peak in CO concentrations during January 19 and 20 — a week before the main earthquake event.
"Unprecedented" and "dangerous" levels of Carbon Monoxide are being released into the atmosphere from seismic faults. The levels are so bad, they're dangerous!
People on the West coast may find they are having trouble breathing and feel strangely tired. Some folks may notice the surface of their skin taking on a bright red appearance; the signs of Carbon Monoxide poisoning.
Scientists are working feverishly to try to determine the cause, but, they say a consensus is quickly developing: The earth itself is emitting this gas and it is being released into the atmosphere via seismic fault lines; cracks in the earth's surface where tectonic plates rub together.
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