MELTING snow could trigger earthquakes, says a geophysicist who has been studying quake records from the inland mountains of Japan.
Kosuke Heki from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan in Mitake looked at earthquake records dating back nearly 1500 years. In regions that receive regular winter snowfall he noticed that large earthquakes – greater than magnitude 7 – were three times as likely to occur in the spring.
Heki suggests that the weight of the snow deforms the Earth’s crust and alters how strain builds up along an earthquake fault. “Extra snow increases the compression, squeezing the fault together,” he says. When…
