Following is a widely publicized announcement from the M-8 earthquake prediction
group in Russia regarding their prediction of the great Kunlun Mountains earthquake.

Dear Colleague,

As you may have already noticed the recent major earthquake in China
has been predicted in the course of our Test of M8-MSc algorithms.

1. WHAT OCCURRED AND WHAT WAS PREDICTED?

-- EARTHQUAKE:
Origin time - 2001/11/14 09:26:10.0;
Coordinates - 35.994N 90.498E;
Depth - 10 km (set by geophysicist);
Magnitudes - 6.2mb and 8.1MS;
F-E Region - QINGHAI, CHINA.

This is taken from the USGS/NEIC QUICK EPICENTER
DETERMINATIONS Golden, CO - NO. 1-320 NOV 16, 2001.

-- PREDICTION:
Earthquake(s) with magnitude 8 or more will occur in
the circle shown in the figure (called CI#233 in the Test)
during the time period from July 1997 through July 2002.

This prediction was E-mailed on July 17, 2001 along with the
updated predictions of major earthquakes worldwide.
You may also find it and previous predictions the web at
http://mitp.ru/predictions.html (now mirrored at
http://www.phys.ualberta.ca/mirrors/mitp/predictions.html).

2. WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY GAIN?

-- No earthquake of such magnitude had been ever reported
inside CI#233 before the 2001 Qinghai earthquake.
The largest one in the 20th century has magnitude MS= 7.9 and
happened on November 08, 1997 four months after declaration
of the M8 alarm in our Test. (The next largest magnitude is 7.3.)

A conservative estimation of probability gain is about 20,
so that the prediction is not trivial indeed.

-- The nearest magnitude 8.0+ earthquake happened on
November 18, 1951 near Lhasa, Xizang (Tibet) 375 miles
(600 km) south of the November 14, 2001 epicenter.
That time period is not covered by our predictions even in
retrospection due to insufficient seismic data at that time.

3. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS.

-- Our worldwide test includes prediction of alarm area by algorithm
MSc in the regions, where earthquake catalog is sufficiently complete
for that purpose. No such catalog is available in the region where
Qinghai earthquake occurred.

-- The magnitude and location of the November 14, 2001 Qinghai
earthquake may be revised when additional data and further analysis
results are available. This will be taken into account in our periodic
rigorous estimations of the results of the Test.

-- This earthquake is located in a sparsely populated, mountainous
region.

Vladimir G. Kossobokov
Date: Monday, November 19, 2001

• M-8 Earthquake predictions