Earthquakes caused and (not) predicted

We have seen a significant increase in inquiries over the past few days regarding the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on August 8. The main concerns from Alaskans are whether a large earthquake across the Pacific Ocean from us could cause stress along the Alaskan section of the Pacific Plate boundary. The second concern is earthquake forecasting, especially given that Japan has issued a “major earthquake warning.”

Consulting vs. Prediction

Let’s address the second question first. There is currently no way to predict earthquakes, and scientists say that making such a promise would be completely irresponsible. While no one can currently predict the size, location, strength, or timing of an earthquake, we can be sure that Alaska will continue to experience earthquakes—the Alaska Earthquake Center reports an average of one earthquake every ten minutes in the state.

Likewise, Japan can ensure that earthquakes will continue to occur. On August 8, the Nankai subduction zone ruptured with a magnitude-7.1 earthquake. The region has a history of very large earthquakes. A magnitude-8 quake occurs there every hundred years or so, and the last one occurred in 1946. Moreover, a magnitude-7.2 earthquake in the Tohoku region in 2011 was preceded by a magnitude-9.1 earthquake just a few days later. Japan has thus taken the unprecedented step of issuing a warning – not a forecast! – to remind people that the region is capable of very destructive earthquakes, and that everyone should be prepared for the possibility of another one. In general, there is a 5%-10% chance that a medium-sized earthquake will be followed by a larger one in the same region within a few days.

Shifting pressures

The first question, whether a large earthquake can trigger another, is more complicated. There is a phenomenon called “trigger events,” which have been documented even in Alaska. If a fault is oriented correctly, and if its stress is close to its critical failure point, a seismic wave crossing the globe can push that fault into the right stress state that allows it to slip. In fact, the seismic waves from each earthquake travel across the globe, effectively ringing like a bell. (See the graphic in this story for an animation of the Aug. 8 earthquake in Japan crossing our network, created by the EarthScope Consortium.) The odds of any scientist being able to determine how any of Alaska’s hundreds of faults will respond to any given seismic wave are essentially zero.

Another part of the long-term impact of a large earthquake is the concept that a single earthquake can shift stresses in the surrounding area enough to trigger another earthquake. This is known as Coulomb stress transfer, and it’s limited to the immediate vicinity of the ruptured fault. A large earthquake can cause a neighboring fault in the same area, or an adjacent part of the same fault, to slip. That’s what happened in the case of the 7.6-magnitude Sand Point aftershock in October 2020 after the 7.8-magnitude Semyonov earthquake in July 2020. Coulomb stress transfer within Japan’s fault networks is one of the possibilities Japan is worried about after its 7.1-magnitude earthquake, and part of the reason it issued the advisory, but it’s not the kind of impact that could reach Alaska.

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