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E Honshu March 2011 - Analysis (Pt 2)

2013-03-31 20:49:36 Admin Others

Although it was noted that the E.Honshu area was in a continuing disturbed situation at the time of the M8.9 quake of 11th March it is difficult to say that the event could have been predicted accurately - even in hind sight. The author had made daily statistical computations of likelihood of magnitude 6 quakes in E.Honshu, which indicated that out of 12 sites under daily investigation in SE Asia, E.Honshu was the most likely to have an event of this magnitude on 22 out of 52 days on days leading up to the 11th March, including being most likely on 9th and 10th March. (This is significantly higher than average for the location over a long period) Thus in many ways a large quake at this time was not unexpected. Note that in the above figure green ellipse represents M7+ and blue ellipse represents M6+ events The author had also made hourly predictions of quakes based on relative acceleration of sun and moon from the location. However this method predicted an average of 3 M6+ events every 10 hours for the period from 1st January to 6am on 11th March for E.Honshu so could by no means be used alone to predict accurately. The most successful way of prediction is therefore a combination of daily stress analysis and relative tidal acceleration, combined with statistical inference from lunar and solar observer latitudes. It should be noted that in the hourly prediction analysis it is considered that predictions for Kuril and E. Hokkaido may also influence the E.Honshu area, so should not be ignored