Earth tides as a triggering mechanism for earthquakes

Simpson, John F.

doi:10.1016/0012-821x(67)90192-6

Cited by 45 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The phenomenon of tidal triggering has been clearly observed in lunar seismicity (Lammlein et af. 1974) but has not been conclusively demonstrated in catalogues of global or large-scale seismicity of the Earth (Schuster 1897;Knopoff 1964;Simpson 1967;Shlien & Toksoz 1970;Heaton 1975Heaton , 1982Shudde & Barr 1977;Stothers 1990; and many others). In regional and local catalogues, however, correlations with varying levels of significance between lunar/solar phases and earthquake origin times have been reported by Shlien (1972), Klein (1976), Young & Ziirn (1979), Kilston & Knopoff (1983), Palumbo (1986), Ulbrich, Ahorner & Ebel (1987), Shirley (1988), and others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On tidal triggering of earthquakes at Campi Flegrei, Italy

Rydelek

Sacks

Scarpa

1992

Geophysical Journal International

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S U M M A R YThe caldera at Campi Flegrei underwent an inflationary episode during 1982-84 that produced a maximum uplift of 1.6m at Pozzuoli, Italy. The seismicity at Pozzuoli increased enormously during the time of the uplift, but was delayed by several months. Ground deformation during inflation has been previously well modelled with a finite element model of a pressurized magma chamber in an elastic medium that takes into account the effects of increasing pressure and temperature with depth on elasticity. We used the output from this modei to estimate the temporal change in the stress field that presumably controls the seismicity during inflation. The result is that the solid-earth tidal stress should modulate heavily the seismogenic inflationary stress, which in turn should result in some tidally triggered earthquakes. This expectation is based on the assumptions that: (a) the inflationary model is valid; (b) tidal and inflationary stresses can be superimposed; (c) the inflation is smooth on the time-scale of periodic tidal stress variations; and, most importantly (d) earthquakes occur when a critical level of stress has been reached. We checked the Pozzuoli catalogue for evidence of tidal triggering with the Schuster test and found none. The Schuster test is sensitive enough to easily detect a diurnal variation of reported seismicity caused by day-to-night changes in noise levels. The lack of tidal triggering suggests that one (or more) of the above assumptions is wrong. After evaluating each assumption, we conclude that the most likely explanation is that the failure threshold for seismicity is time dependent at Pozzuoli. In other words, earthquakes do not necessarily occur when the stress exceeds the yield strength of a fault for a short time only.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On tidal triggering of earthquakes at Campi Flegrei, Italy

Rydelek

Sacks

Scarpa

1992

Geophysical Journal International

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“…Nevertheless, whether the Earth tide is a significant triggering factor is still debated (Knopoff, 1964;Simpson, 1967;Heaton, 1982;Vidale et al, 1998). We argue that two limitations of the H.-J.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The effect of tides on the triggering of earthquakes has been widely investigated since the 1930s (Nasu et al, 1931;Davison, 1934;Stetson, 1935;Allen, 1936;Knopoff, 1964;Simpson, 1967;Tsuruoka et al, 1995;Vidale et al, 1998;Souchay and Stavinschi, 1999;Tanaka et al, 2002;Cochran et al, 2004). Allen (1936) tabulated earthquakes into different groups according to the lunar-hour angle of the moon and observed a relationship between the occurrence of earthquakes and the biweekly oscillation of tides.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chen et al: Effect of tidal triggering on seismicity in Taiwan methodologies used in previous investigations affect their analyses. First, several previous studies focused only on earthquakes with magnitudes larger than 5 (Simpson, 1967;Tsuruoka et al, 1995;Tanaka et al, 2002), which might prevent significant information about the tidal triggering effect from being extracted from the data. Second, some of the analyses were based on limited data sets or localized samples (Allen, 1936;Knopoff, 1964;Palumbo, 1986;Vidale et al, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effect of tidal triggering on seismicity in Taiwan revealed by the empirical mode decomposition method

Chen

Tseng

et al. 2012

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. The effect of tidal triggering on earthquake occurrence has been controversial for many years. This study considered earthquakes that occurred near Taiwan between 1973 and 2008. Because earthquake data are nonlinear and non-stationary, we applied the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method to analyze the temporal variations in the number of daily earthquakes to investigate the effect of tidal triggering. We compared the results obtained from the nondeclustered catalog with those from two kinds of declustered catalogs and discuss the aftershock effect on the EMD-based analysis. We also investigated stacking the data based on inphase phenomena of theoretical Earth tides with statistical significance tests. Our results show that the effects of tidal triggering, particularly the lunar tidal effect, can be extracted from the raw seismicity data using the approach proposed here. Our results suggest that the lunar tidal force is likely a factor in the triggering of earthquakes.

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“…A remarkable number of studies have been devoted to the possibility of triggering of earthquakes by earth tides. Most have reported negative conclusions about the correlation between the earth tide and earthquake occurrence (Schuster, 1897;Knopoff, 1964;Simpson, 1967;Shudde and Barr, 1977;Heaton, 1982;Curchin and Pennington, 1987;Rydelek et al, 1992;Vidale et al, 1998). However, many (Enescu and Enescu, 1999;Stavinschi and Souchay, 2003;Stroup, 2007;Tsuruoka et al, 1995;Tolstoy et al, 2002;Tanaka et al, 2002Tanaka et al, , 2006Zugravescu et al, 1985, Zugravescu et al, 1989Wilcock, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tidal triggering evidence of intermediate depth earthquakes in the Vrancea zone (Romania)

Cadicheanu

Ruymbeke

Zhu

2007

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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We assigned a tidal component phase angle for each event which is computed from the earthquake occurrence time. Then the phase angle distribution was obtained by stacking every angle value in a 360 degree coordinate. Main lunar and solar semidiurnal tidal components M2 and S2 are considered. The phase angle distributions are tested by Permutation test which are introduced for the first time to a tidal triggering study. We compared results with classical Schuster's test. Both tests produce one value, p p for Permutation test and p s for Schuster's test, which represent the significance level for rejecting the null hypothesis that earthquakes occur randomly irrespective of tidal activities M2 and S2 phase distribution are random for the complete data set. However, when we set up a one year window and slide it by 30 d step, significant correlations were found in some windows. As a result of the sliding window, data set systematic temporal patterns related to the decrease of the p p and p s values seem to precede the occurrence of larger earthquakes.

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Earth tides as a triggering mechanism for earthquakes

Cited by 45 publications

References 6 publications

On tidal triggering of earthquakes at Campi Flegrei, Italy

On tidal triggering of earthquakes at Campi Flegrei, Italy

Effect of tidal triggering on seismicity in Taiwan revealed by the empirical mode decomposition method

Tidal triggering evidence of intermediate depth earthquakes in the Vrancea zone (Romania)

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