More earthquakes could occur globally & India needn’t worry about a bad monsoon in 2018

Earthquakes are among nature’s worst disasters, and predicting them accurately is a holy grail of sorts for geophysical science. While scientists are far from predicting them accurately, if ever, they are beginning to understand the earthquake mechanisms and hence are able to make better-informed guesses, according to one of which the world will see more earthquakes next year. The analysis was published as a paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in August this year. Periodic slowing and speeding of rotation of the Earth are common. When the rotation speeds up, the Earth’s equator bulges, and when it slows down, the equator shrinks.

When it contracts, the stress is shifted towards the poles. When this shift happens, faults, or cracks in the Earth’s crust, which are already stressed can respond by triggering an earthquake. The Earth slowed down marginally in 2011. According to the scientists, it takes about five to six years for it to manifest in earthquakes. The big earthquake in Mexico in September may have been a warning shot for next year.

Like earthquake prediction, forecasting a monsoon accurately well in advance is also extremely valuable but difficult. However, seasonal monsoon forecasts have been improving but are nowhere near the required accuracy. There are many factors that influence the monsoon, and one of the major ones is El Nino, which is a periodic warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean. The higher the degree of warming, the poorer the Indian monsoon most of the time. The year before last was one of the worst El Ninos in recent times, and it coincided with one of the worst monsoons in recent times.

As it stands now, temperatures in the Pacific are below normal and are likely to stay that way through the winter. Meteorologists who watch Pacific temperatures say that normal conditions are likely to return to the Pacific by April-May, but an El Nino is nowhere in sight. This directly does not correlate with a good monsoon, but makes a poor monsoon unlikely.

Source: United States Geological Survey