Abstract
EVERY few years we pass through a season of marked earthquake-frequency, or, as Mallet called it, a ‘period of paroxysmal energy’. In the mere fact of clustering, there is nothing remark-able; it is its intensity, rather than its existence, that is worthy of notice. In Italy, for example, Mercalli pointed out, 209 destructive earth-quakes occurred between the years 1601 and 1881, and 182 of them in 103 years. In other words, the average frequency of great earthquakes during one of the cluster-years was eleven times that during one of the remaining years.
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References
G. Mercalli, "Vulcani e fenomeni vulcanici in Italia," 1888, pp 353–355.
Brit. Ass. Rep., 1858, p. 49 and plates 1–6.
Brit. Ass. Rep., 1908, pp. 63–64; 1909, pp. 56–58.
Brit. Ass. Rep., 1911, pp. 649-440.
The date of the maximum epoch M may be too early, for, towards the end of the century, the catalogue may not be quite complete.
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DAVISON, C. Clustering and Periodicity of Earthquakes. Nature 120, 587–588 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120587a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120587a0
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