I'm curious about possible coupling between the ongoing drought in the western US and seismic activity.
There is published work indicating correlations between rainfall and seismicity (1) and rainfall and volcanic activity (2). There's other work relating seismicity to fracking, filling the Oroville reservoir, etc.
A study (3) this week indicated a median land uplift of 4mm ranging up to 15mm uplift in some California mountains due to a mass deficit of 240Gt of missing rainfall since 2013.
I wonder if the drought-related uplift could alter underground strain patterns enough to influence earthquake frequencies or magnitudes? Any geophysicists wanna weigh in?
There is published work indicating correlations between rainfall and seismicity (1) and rainfall and volcanic activity (2). There's other work relating seismicity to fracking, filling the Oroville reservoir, etc.
A study (3) this week indicated a median land uplift of 4mm ranging up to 15mm uplift in some California mountains due to a mass deficit of 240Gt of missing rainfall since 2013.
I wonder if the drought-related uplift could alter underground strain patterns enough to influence earthquake frequencies or magnitudes? Any geophysicists wanna weigh in?
(1) http://www.geophysik.uni-muenchen.de/~igel/PDF/hainzletal_gr... (2) http://envam1.env.uea.ac.uk/matthewsetal2009.pdf (3) http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/20/science.1...