Institute of Earth Sciences Seminar

Sigurjón Jónsson (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia)

Title: Is summertime a good time for earthquakes?

Date: Friday, 21st September
Time: 12:30
Place: 3rd Floor meeting room, Askja

Abstract: Since ancient times, people have been drawn to systematic structure and regularities of natural phenomena and sought explanations for them. These include, for example, hexagonal shapes as well as temporal weather patterns. Understanding temporal behavior has obvious forecasting benefits and helps us to prepare for e.g. pending storms and floods. Some other temporal patterns are more elusive, such as earthquake occurrence and most researchers believe they are simply not predictable. While we learn increasingly more about how large and how often major earthquakes take place in the different seismically active regions around the world, we are unable to say exactly when they happen. Still, earthquake occurrence does not appear to be completely random and increasing number of studies are showing temporal correlations between earthquakes and natural variations such as earth tides or major climatic patterns, although the reported correlation is usually weak. In this lecture, I will focus on major earthquakes in south Iceland, which appear to preferentially occur in summer. I will discuss how significant this tendency is, what seasonal variations are the most prominent in the area and how they might modify conditions for earthquake occurrence at depth in the crust.

All are welcome.