This report contains a general discussion of why earthquakes in general are not being effectively predicted, and a specific discussion of a group of earthquake forecasting computer programs I have developed with some help from a retired professional computer programmer.

These are personal opinions.

WHY EARTHQUAKES ARE NOT BEING PREDICTED

A popular and often quoted saying states that,

“The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

It means that people tend to pay more attention to things that are constantly bothering them. And this is probably one of the main reasons that earthquakes are not being effectively predicted in spite of the importance of our being able to do that. In technologically advanced countries, catastrophic earthquakes occur so infrequently at a given location that people think about them only on those rare occasions when they do occur. People don’t think about the importance of forecasting earthquakes for very long after one occurs. And they don’t effectively pressure their governments to spend adequate amounts of time, energy, and money on earthquake forecasting research and development. Developing nations where highly destructive earthquakes might occur more often don’t have the money and other resources needed to do advanced research.

This is unfortunately the way it is for many health and life threatening problems. The apathy problems are not limited to just earthquake science.

I am in complete agreement with people who feel that there are many potentially valuable earthquake forecasting procedures out there. But because the researchers developing them have so far as I can tell been unable to overcome that apathy problem, their procedures are not being effectively investigated or used. I can’t see that situation changing in the foreseeable future. However, the forecasting computer programs that I have developed might help bring about a change in attitudes. If the programs are successful then I believe that they might have the secondary beneficial effect of encouraging governments, private groups, and individual researchers to take more interest in other forecasting procedures.

Governments etc. will hopefully say,

“The computer programs do actually work. But they have limitations. So let’s look around for some other forecasting methods that can fill in the blanks.”

If they then develop those other applications, discover that they produce better results than my computer programs (probably likely), and decide that they no longer need the programs then that is fine with me. The programs will have perhaps indirectly achieved their goal which is to keep people from losing their lives during earthquakes.

These computer programs might be almost unique in their ability to overcome those apathy problems for the following reasons and others.

1. The Computer Programs Actually Work And Enable People To Forecast Earthquakes

I know this because of the success I myself have been having with getting them to point to approaching earthquakes. The latest earthquake that I studied along those lines was a very powerful one that occurred in the Tonga area not too long ago.

The programs are used to compare earthquake fault zone activity related electromagnetic pulse signals with past earthquakes. They can also be used to compare one earthquake with another. There are plenty of electromagnetic signals out there. And they are easy to detect anywhere on the planet from what I can tell. High quality earthquake data are available from numerous sources.

Unfortunately, I don’t have time to run the programs, do research on them, and at the same time develop the computer codes. So about two years ago I largely stopped trying to forecast earthquakes and began spending almost all of my available time on the research and computer programming work. There was a major breakthrough with the programming efforts last August 2. And since then I have been spending virtually all of my available time for forecasting on getting the computer programs into a form where they can be circulated to people around the world. They are actually ready for that now. I am just preparing some instruction reports that tell researchers how to get the programs running and exactly what types of data they generate.

Another way to show that the computer programs work is to use them to compare what I refer to as “Earthquake Pairs.” They are two or more earthquakes that most often occurred in the same location days, weeks, or months apart and were triggered by similar geophysical forces. The second earthquake is often regarded as an aftershock of the first one. The computer programs make it extremely easy to identify at least some Earthquake Pairs. And there appear to be plenty of them to study.

One excellent example of an Earthquake Pair, perhaps the best that I have seen to date, would be the two highly destructive earthquakes that occurred in Turkey in 1999. Another good example would be the two highly destructive ones that occurred in Afghanistan in 1998.

There is a common type of limitation with the programs. If you go into a hospital and have an MRI test or some other complex medical test run they don’t just hand you a piece of paper telling you what the results are. They have to be interpreted by expertly trained medical personnel. To some extent the same is true with my computer programs. They can actually be used by anyone with a PC type computer running Windows NT or any later version of Windows such as XP or Vista. And untrained amateur researchers using them to do simple analyses should have at least some successes. But as information supplied with the programs will demonstrate, the data they generate really need to be evaluated by experienced scientific researchers for the best results. You don’t need to be a geophysicist, though that would undoubtedly help. I myself have two university degrees in other areas of the physical sciences and am an experienced professional analyst. I am not a geologist.

2. Professional And Amateur Researchers Around The World Can Easily Use The Computer Programs

One of the main limitations of most forecasting methods is the fact that they can be used by only a relatively few people. The equipment can be expensive. And the researchers need to be extensively trained. Earthquake Clouds are seen by only the people near the fault zone or researchers spending considerable amounts of time studying satellite photos. And the researchers are often able to tell the difference between earthquake clouds and other types of clouds only after an earthquake has occurred. That is still invaluable information. But it is a little late for a timely forecast.

The plan is to make the computer programs I have developed available for free use by researchers around the world through one or more Web sites. With a standard high speed Internet connection it might take a minute to download the 10 megabyte zip file containing all of the programs and support files. Then it would take about a minute to extract the main program directory from the zip file and store it on a computer, external hard drive, or even a flash drive where it can be run. And it is ready to go. Nothing else has to be downloaded. The Gnuplot freeware graphics program being used to generate charts and maps creates two text files on the computer when it runs. But if they are deleted and if the main program directory is deleted then everything associated with the programs is completely gone from the computer. They doesn’t add anything to the Windows registry or install anything on the computer.

What that means is that instead of having just a handful of people using some procedure to forecast earthquakes, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of professional and amateur researchers around the world could be using the computer programs. With so many people using them, research advances should occur fairly rapidly. And some of those researchers will probably get sufficiently interested in the science of forecasting earthquakes that they will start working with other methods such as Earthquake Cloud research.

3. Computer Programmers Around The World Will Be Doing A Lot Of The Development Work

It is extremely easy to improve the performance of these computer programs by simply generating better computer code. For example, my graphics routines presently generate 2 dimensional charts and world maps. But many of the data could easily be displayed with 3 dimensional charts and maps. 4 dimensional charts and maps could even be generated if different colors were used. The computer program codes for the 3 and 4 dimension charts and maps just need to be written. And that type of work is easy for experienced computer programmers.

There are many professional and amateur researchers who are interested in earthquake forecasting. And the number of computer programmers around the world who like to work on interesting projects is so large that I can’t even guess what it might be. Those people will be able to develop far more sophisticated and powerful versions of the computer programs with very little effort using whatever computer language, computer, and operating system such as UNIX or Linux they wish. They won’t be limited to using Windows, the Perl computer language, and Excel once the program source codes are made available. And I am going to try to release the source codes around the same time that the programs themselves are released.

In Summary,

Perhaps the primary limiting problem with earthquake forecasting research around the world is the fact that there are far too few researchers doing that work. The main reason there are so few is the fact that the equipment needed to do the work is usually quite expensive. And people need a lot of training to do the work. Destructive earthquakes occur so infrequently in technologically advanced nations that their governments are unwilling to devote more resources to basic research.

My earthquake forecasting computer programs should help move this science quickly past those limitations because they will enable hundreds, thousands, and in theory even millions of professional and amateur researchers and computer programmers around the world to begin doing earthquake forecasting and earthquake triggering research for zero expense and with virtually no training.

Hopefully, the computer programs will also have the secondary benefit of sparking a broader interest in the science of earthquake forecasting and in other forecasting methods.

Finally, on another note,

As I have been telling people, I have developed what I believe is a sophisticated theory for why Earthquake Clouds sometimes form near a fault zone before some earthquakes occur. That theory is probably compatible with some of the theories that state that electric charges are appearing on the ground surface near the fault zone. And the theory could probably explain the appearance of the Earthquake Clouds, thermal anomalies in the clouds such as lines that look like they represent gaps in the clouds, and unusual Earthquake Cloud formations such as “Feather Clouds.”

It is probably publishable material if it can be confirmed. I don’t have time myself to prepare a formal publication. If there is no interest in the theory then when time permits I will probably try to summarize it in a report and see if I can have it stored at the Meteoquake Web site.

Meteoquake.org

• Meteoquake