Earthquake prediction simply impossible

Rumour mills again got active on Sunday night after a 5.9 intensity aftershock jolted northern Pakistan that another major earthquake is imminent. Citizens of Islamabad and Karachi particularly bought the canard and spread so much scare that Meteorological Department Director-General Dr Qamaruzzaman Chaudhry had to appear on television to soothe their nerves.

“Never in history has a major earthquake been followed by another major earthquake,” he said.

Aftershocks do follow for weeks but they have a positive aspect, he said.

Some 900 minor and major aftershocks recorded since the October 8 earthquake establish that the energy underneath the epicentre of that quake was being released and not building up which in fact causes earthquakes, he explained.

Dr Qamaruzzaman noted that it took 100 years after the last major earthquake hit the region — the Kangra earthquake in 1905 — for sufficient energy to build up to cause the October 8 havoc.

Before that a high intensity earthquake to hit the region had occurred in 1555 AD, he added.

Despite these assertions by an expert, it is possible that some people may still be willing to lend their ears to baseless gossip that tends to strike fear in the hearts of common people.

It would be useful for gullible people to know that there exists no method, no instrumentation in the world to predict earthquakes.

Only amateurs, cranks and outright publicity seekers would indulge in wild predictions, and they would be all wrong, says Robert Geller, a professor at the Department of Earth and Planetary Physics, Tokyo University.

Other scientists including David Jackson, Yan Kegan and Francesco Mulargis are definite that no scientist has ever predicted a major earthquake. “They do not know now how (to predict), and they do not expect to know how at any time.”

Earthquake prediction is usually defined as the “specification of the time, location, and magnitude of a future earthquake within stated limits, and the prediction must be reliable and accurate”, scientists say.

And recent researches continue to assert that the belief that earthquakes could be predicted is entirely misplaced.

For large earthquakes to be pinpointed in advance it must be based on the study of unusual events.

According to a recent meeting of seismologists and earth scientists the Earth is in a state of self organized criticality where a small earthquake may perhaps graduate into a major one, but whether it would depend on a catalogue of details of happening at some distance from it.

In any case prediction of a specific large earthquake would require the unlikely capability of knowing all these factors with a degree of accuracy which is beyond any one’s ken at this precise moment.

Based on scientific researches we can say with a degree of certainty that no one can predict an individual earthquake.

By: Jonaid Iqbal
Courtesy: DAWN