© Motoya Nakamura /The Oregonian
The tsunami triggered by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck Japan in March devastated coastal areas. This photo of the town of Onagawa as taken April 8, 2011. The Pacific Northwest sits atop a fault zone much like the one that ruptured the sea floor off Japan, killing thousands.
The tsunami triggered by the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that struck Japan in March devastated coastal areas. This photo of the town of Onagawa as taken April 8, 2011. The Pacific Northwest sits atop a fault zone much like the one that ruptured the sea floor off Japan, killing thousands.
A somewhat reassuring new study suggests otherwise.
University of California researchers examined the timing of earthquakes worldwide from 1900 and found no evidence of a domino effect in which one great earthquake triggers others on distant continents. It could be random chance.
"We don't want people to assume that our conclusion means the ongoing risk is small," says study co-author Peter Shearer, a professor of geophysics at the University of California San Diego. "There is a significant risk of big earthquakes in all subduction zones." It's just that the run of very large earthquakes most likely does nothing to change the risk in distant locations, Shearer says.
