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There have been over 130 tremors across India during the first half of 2020 but with all attention on COVID-19 a tremor, whether 4.5 or 5 on the Richter Scale has not made headlines. The recent tremors have been reported as far as the far east of Arunachal Pradesh to the far north of Kashmir Valley, the south to national capital Delhi. These have become almost regular since the past few weeks. Tremors have also been reported in other parts of the world. These then lead to the question –whether the ‘big one’ is on its way? This has led seismologists at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to ask, why have there been so many reported earthquakes? USGS also wondered whether naturally occurring earthquake activity have been increasing? Some have even speculated, that since the planet has yet to experience a major earthquake for quite sometime, there could be possibility pressure building up for a big one. To answer these, the USGS said a temporary increase in seismicity is part of the normal fluctuation of earthquake rates. It said neither an increase or decrease worldwide is a positive indication that a large earthquake is imminent. That may be some comfort but that still does not mean a big quake will not jolt some part of the earth sometime. When a big event happens, all the smaller earthquakes that have occurred in that region in the near past are classified as foreshocks. Foreshocks are post-event definitions. The description does not exist before any big earthquake has happened. The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) has observed about 20,000 earthquakes each year, or approximately 55 per day. This is more because people today are much better prepared or informed about impending earthquakes as a result of the improvements in communications and the increased interest in natural disasters. The most recent and largest total was in 2010 when there were 24 earthquakes greater than or equal to the magnitude of 7.0 . In other years the total was well below the 16 per year expected based on the long-term average: 1989 only saw six, while 1988 saw only seven major earthquakes. Earthquakes of magnitude four or below hardly cause any damage anywhere and are mostly inconsequential for practical purposes. Thousands of such earthquakes are recorded around the world every year, and most of them are uneventful. Scientists have been working for years to identify “precursors” to an earthquake, but have so far met with no success. Some special earthquakes, the ones that are triggered by volcanic activity, can be predicted to some extent. The Himalayan region, extending from the Hindu Kush to the Northeast and going south to Southeast Asia, is seismically one of the most active regions in the world. The region has experienced several big earthquakes in the past, most recently in 2015 in Nepal. Scientists say that the Himalayan region is due for a big earthquake, of magnitude 8 or even higher. That is because they have been able to measure the energy that is getting trapped under the surface as a result of one tectonic plate trying to move beneath the other one. However, even here, scientists and most sophisticated of equipments still cannot predict when this big earthquake will occur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fearing the big one<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}