Insignificant solar-terrestrial triggering of earthquakes
Geophysical Research Letters
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Abstract
We examine the claim that solar-terrestrial interaction, as measured by sunspots, solar wind velocity, and geomagnetic activity, might play a role in triggering earthquakes. We count the number of earthquakes having magnitudes that exceed chosen thresholds in calendar years, months, and days, and we order these counts by the corresponding rank of annual, monthly, and daily averages of the solar-terrestrial variables. We measure the statistical significance of the difference between the earthquake-number distributions below and above the median of the solar-terrestrial averages by χ2 and Student's t tests. Across a range of earthquake magnitude thresholds, we find no consistent and statistically significant distributional differences. We also introduce time lags between the solar-terrestrial variables and the number of earthquakes, but again no statistically significant distributional difference is found. We cannot reject the null hypothesis of no solar-terrestrial triggering of earthquakes.
| Publication type | Article |
|---|---|
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Title | Insignificant solar-terrestrial triggering of earthquakes |
| Series title | Geophysical Research Letters |
| DOI | 10.1002/grl.50211 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Year Published | 2013 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | AGU |
| Contributing office(s) | Geologic Hazards Science Center |
| Description | 6 p. |
| Larger Work Type | Article |
| Larger Work Subtype | Journal Article |
| Larger Work Title | Geophysical Research Letters |
| First page | 1165 |
| Last page | 1170 |
| Google Analytic Metrics | Metrics page |