Sitting on top of four major tectonic plates, Japan is one of the countries most at risk of earthquakes. That fact was demonstrated in tragic and dramatic fashion on Jan. 1, when a magnitude 7.
6 earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, directly and indirectly killing as many as 275 people, knocking out key infrastructure, displacing thousands and severely damaging or destroying tens of thousands of homes. The Noto Peninsula has, in fact, been experiencing an ongoing “seismic swarm” — many earthquakes within a relatively small area that don’t fit a “mainshock-aftershock” pattern — since late 2020, with this generating earthquakes at 10 times the average regional rate. No one knew why — but now a major clue has emerged.
A new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists shows that heavy snowfall and rain can influence how and when earthquakes happen. When looking for the cause of an earthquake, the search is typically internal, beginning underground. But the study, published May 8 in Science Advances, shows that earthquakes can have external, aboveground triggers as well.
The scientists analyzed a series of earthquakes in the Noto region that occurred between 2012 and 2023, finding that the seismic activity in the region is synchronized with changes in underground pressure, which is influenced by seasonal patterns of precipitation. According to them, heavy snowfall has more of an influence than heavy rain. For Qingyu Wang, lead a.
