Hi Roger,

Here is the latest on the forecasting front:

A major project that I have been working on for the past year was largely completed last April. Then I had to get working on another project that lasted about two months. One that I am working on now should be done in a week or so. After that I will have quite a few projects including forecasting ones to work on. But I should also be able to schedule in some other forecasting efforts such as computer programming.

EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING COMPUTER PROGRAMS

If you would like to help make some progress in the forecasting field then what you might do is get Perl running on your computer and do some work with it for the following reasons. And we can discuss this further.

My present forecasting program appears to be producing good results. It involves noting the time that certain types of electromagnetic (EM) pulses are detected and then having my computer programs calculate the probability that the EM pulses matched any of the more than 40,000 earthquakes in my database file. The approaching earthquake responsible for the pulses will then often occur near the location of the highest probability pulse-earthquake matches.

What I am hoping to do is learn how to get the main Perl program running and then save it with an .exe format so that the latest version can be stored at some Web site for downloads by governments scientists and researchers around the world. Anyone would be able to run it. They would not need to have Perl running on their own computers.

The program also needs to have a chart generation capability. And it needs to have the ability to generate location information for the positions of the sun and the moon in the sky at specific times. I am presently using a spreadsheet program to generate charts and the MICA program to generate the sun and moon data.

You would not need to do an extensive amount of programming in Perl. In fact, you could write the programs in TrueBasic and then we could convert them to Perl. But there are some Perl processes that I don’t yet understand how to do such as saving .exe programs and generating chart. And I could use some help with learning how to do those types of things.

EARTHQUAKE CLOUDS

I have been talking for quite a while regarding them with other researchers. And my own belief and that of some other people is that “Earthquake Clouds” are probably legitimate precursors for some earthquakes. The main problem with using them and other precursors or forecasting methods in general appears to me to be the following one.

EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING PROBLEM

Governments and disaster mitigation groups around the world would certainly like to be able to forecast earthquakes. But for one reason or another they are not having much success with that. One exception, the government of China, is I understand running a massive forecasting program. And I believe that they are probably having some successes. But since their program data are not very easily available it can be difficult to tell how well they are doing.

What this means for earthquake forecasters is that when you generate a forecast, along with the data itself you have to include clear instructions for how people receiving the data should evaluate and respond to the forecast, and information regarding the accuracy of the forecast. I myself usually include those types of information with forecasts that I circulate to governments and disaster mitigation groups.

Many forecasters do not include those additional types of information with their forecasts. Often they probably don’t even know how to generate them. As a result, both their forecasts and their methodology are ignored. Nothing gets accomplished.

Basically in my opinion, the Earthquake Cloud researchers (there are a number of them) and other forecasters need to get better organized. And they need to learn how to be more effective with their communications. I have been trying to help the Earthquake Cloud researchers and some other forecasters with those things and have had some success. But in part because I myself am not doing any research on the precursors they are working with there is only so much that I can do.

RECOGNITION

So, if I know so much about this then why am I myself not having more success?

Actually, I have been having more success than I have time to deal with. My present forecasting program is running quite well. My forecasting research has been discussed by news media around the world. A forecasting book that I helped get written was published last year. And it was apparently so successful that its author almost immediately received approval to write a second one. And she and I are trying to find some time to discuss what could be included in the new book.

LATEST FORECAST

The earthquake precursor signals that I work with appear to be on an extended vacation as are our highly destructive earthquakes. There has not been much activity with either in months. There was a recent one in China that did some damage. But it was not one of those really devastating ones that claim tens of thousands of lives.

With so few precursor signals to work with I have not updated my Data.html Web forecasting page for a while.

http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/Data.html