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according to two papers to be published October 5th in
New Concepts in Global Tectonics. The papers investigate fluctuations in the magnetic field activity of the sun and found a statistically significant relationship between M8+ earthquakes and the extremes and reversals in magnetism of solar polar magnetic fields.
The team first announced the results in August 2014, and recently used the methods proposed in that study to provide evidence that a recent major earthquake fit the patterns observed in the foundational study. In early 2014, Dr. Christopher Holloman's team of researchers at The Ohio State University Statistical Consulting Service was able to construct a model that exhibited very strong agreement between solar magnetism patterns and the occurrence of large earthquakes.
Dr. Holloman warned that formal testing of the model can only be performed by examining its performance over the next few years, but that the agreement was sufficient to suggest that a relationship likely exists between solar polar fields, or magnetic fields associated with the north and south poles of the sun, and large earthquakes. Now we have a subsequent event that appears to comport with the initial study.
"This type of confirmation is merely the first step, but it is certainly a positive one," notes lead author Ben Davidson of SpaceWeatherNews LLC, "we were already in the process of investigating large seismic events since the end-date of our initial study when the Chile disaster occurred, and we hope to have further publications covering those events in more detail in 2016." The second paper was submitted by Davidson alone, and was restricted to analysis of the Chile earthquake in order to accompany the initial study.
