The Big One

There are indications that the San Andreas and related faults have unprecedentedly high stress levels, raising concerns that a 7+ earthquake is due sooner and not later in the area.

Having had been in 2 earthquakes, and remembering one (I was less than 2 years old for the first one), I really hope that is not going to be as bad as it looks.

Earthquakes usually occur along fracture zones in Earth's crust, where large tectonic plates slide past one another and become locked. Stress builds up over long periods and is suddenly released in the form of an earthquake. In Southern California, the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults are among the most significant of these zones, accommodating most of the plate motion in the region.

Where the two fault systems approach each other northeast of Los Angeles lies the Cajon Pass—a tectonically complex junction where a rupture on one fault could potentially cross onto the other. Since the last major earthquake to affect the wider Los Angeles region, the Fort Tejon earthquake of 1857, with a magnitude of 7.9, tectonic stress along the fault segments has built up continuously during a prolonged quiet period that has long concerned researchers, given the potential for a large future rupture.

In a new study led by Dr. Liliane Burkhard of the Division of Space Research and Planetary Sciences (WP) at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, an international research team modeled 1,000 years of earthquake history along the southern San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems to estimate the present-day stress loading at Cajon Pass. Researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Science Center in Pasadena, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego were involved.

The results show that tectonic stresses in the region have reached and, in some cases, exceeded the highest levels of the last millennium.

In the study, the researchers also introduced the concept of Cajon Pass as an "earthquake gate," a junction that controls whether large earthquakes remain confined to a single fault or propagate across both systems simultaneously. The study has just been published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

There are indications that stress is high in both the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults, meaning that there is an elevated chance of both faults rupturing at the same time.

Not good, but still better than Donald Trump. 

You Call THAT an Earthquake?

When I was a wee tyke, I was in an earthquake that was 9.2 on the Richter scale.

The freakout over a magnitude 4.8 earthquake in the New York area, about 25,000 times less than the 1964 Good Friday earthquake is a bit over done.

There was no major damage, and no casualties reported at this time.

It is interesting, however, that the epicenter is in the immediate vicinity of Donald Trump's Bedminster golf club.

My theory is that this was triggered by Ivana Trump spinning in her grave at speeds approaching 86,000 rpm.

Dante's Inferno, Iceland Style

As has been predicted for weeks from tremors, the volcano near Grindavik has erupted.

All the locals have been evacuated, but I have seen notation on what steps were taken to protect action taken to protect the local Huldufólk, who actually have legal protections in the small island nation

It loooks like the gates of hell:

Happy Birthday

To the as yet unnamed Island near Tonga, which emerged from the ocean a few days ago.

With regard to climate, it's actually a pretty big deal, not because the island emerged, but because it put an enormous amount of water into the stratosphere, where it is likely to (very slightly) increase global temperatures and reduce the level of ultraviolet protecting ozone:

A new island has sprung up in a patch of the southwest Pacific Ocean riddled with underwater volcanoes, according to NASA Earth Observatory. 

It began with the eruption of an underwater volcano found in the Central Tonga Islands on September 10 – and within just eleven hours, a landmass emerged from the watery depths, created by oozing lava that had been cooled by the ocean waters and solidified.

Over the following days, lava continued to pour and the newly formed island grew. The island was 170 meters (558 feet) in diameter on September 16 and eventually swelled to 182 meters over the following two days. 

By September 20, the island had grown to cover 24,000 square meters (6 acres) with an elevation of 10 meters (33 feet).

The heating effect, which will be rather short term is only about .05°C, but I am sure that some climatologists are getting a serious geek on about this.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope.

We saw this in Tennessee:

First, the developer has completely removed the ground cover on a very steep slope.

Second, even if the developer claims that they took special care with the foundations, I do not trust the developer. Never trust a real estate developer.

Finally, even if the developer is conscientious, the contractor might not be.

Read the Comments

Diamonds grown in a lab don't conjure up quite the same emotions as natural diamonds do https://t.co/NJmh2YSWlT pic.twitter.com/AxW2T5rOQa

— Bloomberg Opinion (@bopinion) January 4, 2022

Notice the little notation on the graph? The Study was done by De Beers a monopoly who control the supplies of natural diamonds.

I could have linked to the article, but the comments in response to the Tweet are for the ages, things like, "Study shows sheep find fencing and shepherds psychologically distressing. Source: Wolves," and, "The idea that a village burned to the ground and its survivors enslaved into forced labour for these diamonds get a significant amount of people secretly moist," are only the tip of a snark iceberg that is truly awesome to behold.

Seriously, check out the comments.

I Could Walk There

Magnificent Desolation

Less than 5 miles from my house, there are exposed chunks of the mantle, at Soldiers Delight.

Because of the unique chemistry of the area, very low calcium and very high magnesium in the soil, we have what can be called a, "Barrens".

Standing among patches of muddy snow on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland, I bent down to pick up a piece of the planet that should have been hidden miles below my feet.

On that chilly February day, I was out with a pair of geologists to see an exposed section of Earth's mantle. While this layer of rock is usually found between the planet's crust and core, a segment peeks out of the scrubby Maryland forest, offering scientists a rare chance to study Earth's innards up close.

ven more intriguing, the rock's unusual chemical makeup suggests that this piece of mantle, along with chunks of lower crust scattered around Baltimore, was once part of the seafloor of a now-vanished ocean.

Over the roughly 490 million years since their formation, these hunks of Earth were smashed by shifting tectonic plates and broiled by searing hot fluids rushing through cracks, altering both their composition and sheen. Mantle rock is generally full of sparkly green crystals of the mineral olivine, but the rock in my hand was surprisingly unremarkable to look at: mottled yellow-brown stone occasionally flecked with black.

“Those rocks have had a tough life,” says George Guice, a mineralogist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Because of this geologic clobbering, scientists have struggled for more than a century to determine the precise origins of this series of rocks. Now, Guice and his colleagues have applied a fresh eye and state-of-the-art chemical analyses to the set of rocky exposures in Baltimore. Their work shows that the seemingly bland series of stones once lurked underneath the ancient Iapetus Ocean. 

More than half a billion years ago, this ocean spanned some 3,000 to 5,000 miles, cutting through what is now the United States’ eastern seaboard. Much of the land where the Appalachian mountains now stand was on one side of the ocean, and parts of the modern East Coast were on the other.

This is wicked cool.

Who had the 2020 Over and Under on an Alaska Earthquake?

There was a 7.8 trembler off the Alaska coast.

No damage and no significant tsunami:

A powerful earthquake located off Alaska’s southern coast jolted some coastal communities late Tuesday, and some residents briefly scrambled for higher ground over fears of a tsunami.

There were no immediate reports of damage in the sparsely populated area of the state, and tsunami warning was canceled after the magnitude 7.8 quake off the Alaska Peninsula produced a wave of a less than a foot.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake struck Tuesday at 10:12 p.m. local time, centered in waters 65 miles south-southeast of Perryville, Alaska at a depth of 17 miles.

Because of its location, nearby communities along the Alaska Peninsula did not experience shaking that would normally be associated with that magnitude of a quake, said Michael West, Alaska State Seismologist.

………

More than a dozen aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 or higher were reported immediately after the earthquake, he said by telephone from the Alaska Earthquake Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“We got people here who are going be working all night,” West said early Wednesday morning. “These aftershocks will go and go and go and go.”

The Alaska-Aleutian Trench was also where a magnitude 9.2 quake in 1964 was centered. That remains the second most powerful earthquake ever recorded. The temblor and ensuing tsunami caused widespread damage and killed 131 people, some as far away as Oregon and California. Alaska is the most actively seismic state. Nearly 25,000 earthquakes have been recorded in Alaska since Jan. 1, according to the center.

I really hope that the fault line is not going to open up like a zipper.

Who Had the 2020 Over and Under for Super-Volcano?

There have been a series of mild earthquakes which may indicate that the Yellowstone super-volcano might be becoming active again:

Monitoring services from the US Geological Survey (USGS) found there have been 213 earthquakes in the Yellowstone National Park in the past 28 days. The tremors were relatively small, with the largest being a 2.1 magnitude tremor on May 22.

However, some experts warn it is not necessarily the size of an earthquake which is an indicator a volcano might erupt, but the quantity of them.

Portland State University Geology Professor Emeritus Scott Burns said: “If you get swarms under a working volcano, the working hypothesis is that magma is moving up underneath there.”

But others disagree about whether an earthquake swarm near a volcano could be a sign of things to come.

Jamie Farrell at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City believes this is just part of the natural cycle for Yellowstone volcano, saying: “Earthquake swarms are fairly common in Yellowstone.

“There is no indication that this swarm is related to magma moving through the shallow crust.”

The Yellowstone supervolcano, located in the US state of Wyoming, last erupted on a major scale 640,000 years ago.

As an FYI, when the Yellowstone Supervolcano (also called the Yellowstone Caldera) last erupted, it put something on the order of 100 km³ material into the air, with heavy ash falls as far away as 1000 miles away.

Additionally, it would likely precipitate a climate catastrophe with widespread crop failures and famine.

I know that the chance of something happening is tiny, but if that doesn't sound like a 2020 thing to you, you have not been paying attention.