Accurate earthquake prediction an elusive task

As with all things, scientists do sometimes hit the mark, writes

from Johannesburg

Farouk Araie

Afew years ago, several Italian scientists were jailed for being unable to predict the earthquake that struck the country.

But who will they blame for the latest deadly quake?

An earthquake that rocked Nepa in the US originated on a fault line that was inactive for more than a century.

Most earthquakes result from plate tectonics, the continuous movement of plates of land along the earth’s surface.

Scientists know where these fault lines are and have maps of where earthquakes are most likely to strike, but they cannot predict with certainty when a large one will occur.

But scientists have had some degree of success in forecasting earthquakes.

The Northridge earthquake in the US was predicted by ultra-long wave radio anomalies. An Italian earthquake was predicted by ground radon excretion.

The Demeter satellite recently detected night-time ion increases over earthquake epicentres before they happened, within 14 days. Infrared detection of fault heating has also been used to detect specific faults under increasing stress that break within seven to 30 days.

The problems of earthquake prediction research were approached through a compilation of a succession of isolated case histories of presumed precursors to subsequent earthquakes.

The challenge to predict earthquakes will elude us for centuries.