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Earthquakes

Future shock in California

Nature volume 435, pages 284–285 (2005)Cite this article

For California, probabilistic principles can be applied to the short-term forecasting of further ground-shaking following an earthquake. How such predictions will be used by the public remains to be seen.

“What can we expect next?” — this question is foremost in the minds of the public and news media following any widely felt earthquake. Put another way, for any person living near the earthquake the question is, “What does this earthquake mean for the earthquake risk in my locality?”. The seismologist's usual reply is a vague comment that because all earthquakes are followed by smaller events (aftershocks), this one will be too, and that although earthquakes are sometimes followed shortly afterwards by larger ones, this is rare, so that the overall risk is essentially unchanged, except close to the epicentre.

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Figure 1: Variability in aftershocks for four earthquakes in California.

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  1. the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, Room 221, 8800 Biological Grade, La Jolla, 92037, California, USA

    Duncan Agnew

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  1. Duncan Agnew
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Agnew, D. Future shock in California. Nature 435, 284–285 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/435284a

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