Meteorological triggering of earthquake swarms at Mt. Hochstaufen, SE-Germany

Kraft, Toni; Wassermann, Joachim; Schmedes, E.; Igel, Heiner

doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2006.03.044

Cited by 69 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…[2] Microearthquakes may be triggered or modulated by climatic forces that have an annual period, implying a causal link between the hydrologic cycle and the mechanical behavior of the upper crust [Gao et al, 2000;Saar and Manga, 2003;Christiansen et al, 2005;Kraft et al, 2006]. This relation implies that stresses induced by the annual hydrologic cycle are sufficient to fracture near-critically stressed rock either through pore-pressure diffusion [Talwani and Acree, 1984;Shapiro et al, 2003;Hainzl et al, 2006] or loading/unloading of the elastic crust [Heki, 2003].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annual modulation of seismicity along the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, CA

Christiansen

Hurwitz

Ingebritsen

2007

Geophysical Research Letters

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We analyze seismic data from the San Andreas Fault (SAF) near Parkfield, California, to test for annual modulation in seismicity rates. We use statistical analyses to show that seismicity is modulated with an annual period in the creeping section of the fault and a semiannual period in the locked section of the fault. Although the exact mechanism for seasonal triggering is undetermined, it appears that stresses associated with the hydrologic cycle are sufficient to fracture critically stressed rocks either through pore‐pressure diffusion or crustal loading/unloading. These results shed additional light on the state of stress along the SAF, indicating that hydrologically induced stress perturbations of ∼2 kPa may be sufficient to trigger earthquakes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annual modulation of seismicity along the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, CA

Christiansen

Hurwitz

Ingebritsen

2007

Geophysical Research Letters

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“…In this regard, both natural and engineering processes that can increase pore pressures and hence influence seismicity (Wang and Manga 2009). A correlation between precipitation and earthquakes (Jiménez and Garcia-Fernández 2000;Ogasawara et al 2002;Hainzl et al 2006;Kraft et al 2006;Husen et al 2007) supports the idea that pore pressure changes caused by rainfall recharge can influence seismicity. The distinctive signature of earthquakes triggered by pore pressure stress is a spatial migration of swarm epicenters.…”

Section: Rainfall-triggered Seismicitymentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Hainzl et al (2006) have found the clear evidence that pore pressure changes induced by rainfall are able to trigger earthquake activity even at surficial depth via the mechanism of fluid diffusion. However, Kraft et al (2006) have revealed the two cases of earthquake swarms that follow heavy rainfall events. In the shallower focal depths, induced earthquakes will be caused by stresses in pore pressure changes.…”

Section: Rainfall-triggered Seismicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Atmospheric blocking anomalies as the synoptic precursors prior to the induced earthquakes: a new climatic conceptual model

Daneshvar

Tavousi

Khosravi

2014

Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol.

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Blocking as an interruption of the climatological storm tracks means an extreme disturbance in the synoptic scale of atmospheric circulation. In this study, we aimed to describe the main role of atmospheric blocking on the earthquake prediction in the southern Iran. We gathered the subjective evidences of a block generation during April 5-9, 2013, which was clearly identified by anomalous data of geopotential height, air temperature, vertical velocity, rainfall rate and latent heat flux. Analysis of geopotential heights at the 500 and 300 hPa levels revealed that there was a dipole split-flow block with associated of a remarkable low-pressure anomaly (-76 m), which has established over southern Iran during April 5-9, 2013. This low pressure into three temporal sequences has influenced three epicenters of upcoming earthquake swarms in south parts of Iran during April and May 2013. Hence, we detected an atmosphericlithospheric cycle as a climatic conceptual model that describes the chain of the blocking-associated rainfall, preceding rainfall-triggered seismic stress, cyclogenesis, thunderstorm and subsequent stress-induced seismicity. We claimed that the blocking-associated anomalies together with the persistence of low pressure could be the earthquake precursors within 3-33 days before the main seismic shocks in Iran.

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“…The largest earthquake swarm by number of events was recorded in August 2002 after a period of extraordinary heavy rainfall with more than 600 events/month. None of these earthquakes were strong enough to be felt (Kraft et al, 2006a). As we will focus on the daily or hourly event rate in the period of 2002-2008, we must first estimate the magnitude of completeness (M c ) for the entire, heterogenous catalogue.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hochstaufen (SE-Bavaria, Germany), Central Swiss and Mt. Hood (Oregon, USA) showed that the triggering or forcing of earthquake swarm occurrence is real and might be described by a simple 1-D diffusion of rain into the subsurface structure (Roth et al, 1992;Saar and Manga, 2003;Kraft et al, 2006a;Husen et al, 2007). In this model, the effect of rain on a critical, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

External forcing of earthquake swarms at Alpine regions: example from a seismic meteorological network at Mt. Hochstaufen SE-Bavaria

Svejdar

Küchenhoff

Fahrmeir

et al. 2011

Nonlin. Processes Geophys.

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Abstract.In the last few years, it has been shown that aboveaverage rainfall and the following diffusion of excess water into subsurface structures is able to trigger earthquake swarms in the uppermost brittle portion of the Earth's crust. However, there is still an ongoing debate on whether the crust already needs to be in a critical-to-failure state or whether it is sufficient that water is transported rapidly within channels and veins of karst or similar geological formations to the underlying, earthquake-generating layers. Also unknown is the role of other forcing mechanisms, possible co-variables and probably necessary tectonic loading in the triggering process of earthquakes. Because of these problems, we do not use an explicit physical model but instead analyze the meteorological and geophysical data via sophisticated statistical models. We are interested in the influence of a more complete set of possible forcing parameters, including the influence of synthetic earth tides, on the occurrence of earthquake swarms. In this context, regression models are the adequate tool, since the calculation of simple correlations can be confounded by the other variables. Since our outcome variable (the number of quakes) is a count, we use Poisson regression models that include the plausible assumption of a Poisson distribution for the counts. For this study, we use nearly continuous recordings of a seismic and meteorological network in the years 2002-2008 at Mt. Hochstaufen in SE-Bavaria. Our non-linear regression model reveals correlations between external forces and the triggering of earthquakes. In addition to the still dominant influence of rainfall, theoretical estimated tidal tilt show some weak influence on the swarm generation. However, the influence of the modeled trend functions shows that rain is by far not the most important forcing mechanism present in the data.

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Meteorological triggering of earthquake swarms at Mt. Hochstaufen, SE-Germany

Cited by 69 publications

References 43 publications

Annual modulation of seismicity along the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, CA

Annual modulation of seismicity along the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, CA

Atmospheric blocking anomalies as the synoptic precursors prior to the induced earthquakes: a new climatic conceptual model

External forcing of earthquake swarms at Alpine regions: example from a seismic meteorological network at Mt. Hochstaufen SE-Bavaria

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