@drlucyjones.bsky.social
Seismologist in Southern California. Viol player. Founder of Tempo: Music for Climate Action
@drwendyrocks.bsky.socialReposted by @drlucyjones.bsky.socialDifferent backgrounds, different expertise, but one shared mission: help make Californians safer from earthquakes.
@disastrouscomms.bsky.social @drlucyjones.bsky.social @samanthastanley.bsky.social
@drlucyjones.bsky.socialThe small quakes this last weekend in Los Angeles were at an offset in the Newport-Inglewood fault. 110 quakes, all small 1≤M≤2.5, all deep ≥12 km, filled in the offset. A similar swarm occurred at another offset in 2021. Part of the gradual coalescing of a fault over hundreds of thousands of years.
@drlucyjones.bsky.socialHumans respond to danger by searching for patterns to find how to be safe. We find patterns in random distributions b/c it makes us feel safer. Feeling out of control increases illusory pattern perception. Earthquakes make most of us feel we lack control. psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1126/...
@drlucyjones.bsky.socialOutside of local triggering (eg., aftershocks), the global distribution of big earthquakes is random in time. That means there is an average rate (15 M7+ evets/yr) but the time since the last event doesn't matter. Sometimes we see clusters - if there were no clusters, it woldn't be random.
@drlucyjones.bsky.socialThoughts from a seismologist on the Venezuelan earthquakes: We are seeing the damage in Caracas and the most recent models show that Caracas was badly hit. But there are almost 1 million people who received even stronger shaking
earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/...