Earthquakes In Central And South America

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Due to the economic mess, I have neglected talking about the most important thing of all: our planet earth, our home sweet home. A hurricane is plummeling Hawaii and just like with Japan last month, there is an earthquake along with a big tropical rotation! Also very strange news from Mexico: the Cocos plate is moving in the exact opposite direction it is being shoved. This is all connected with the long faultline that shows up in America as the San Andreas. This is an astonishing development and I think, the landmass of Mexico is sliding down towards the deep trench offshore because the entire complex is dropping?

From CNN:

An earthquake on Monday jolted the Big Island of Hawaii, which is already under a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning.

The magnitude 5.3 temblor struck at 7:38 p.m. local time, about 25 miles south of Hilo, according to a preliminary report from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Some geologists have theorized that violent storms with intense rotation can trigger earthquakes and we saw this happen twice this summer. I would agree there might be a connection and this bears watching. The suggestion is, the low pressure concentrated over the center of these massive storms deforms the sea bed which is presumably thinner than the islands or continents by definition. Now that we have a lot of satellites watching things, it may be possible to prove a direct connection.

From Xinhua:

An vast offshore tectonic plate that has reversed course and is sliding backward has geologists worried that a devastating earthquake may strike Mexico City.

The tectonic plate had been sliding toward Mexico City at a rate of 1 inch per year, as recorded by Global Positioning System measuring stations near Acapulco and Guerrero, which is about 175 miles southwest of Mexico City. That movement was normal, as predicted by theories of how Earth's crustal plates should move.

At subduction zones, like this one, an oceanic plate usually slides beneath a continental plate, and now and then major temblors occur. Suddenly, in the latter half of 2006, the plate began moving the other way and quadrupled its speed, scientists announced today.

When I saw that news, I thought, 'This is impossible.' And I suspect the plate itself is not moving in the opposite direction but rather, the top of the landmass of Mexico is subsiding towards the trench that runs parallel to the Mexican landmass. This could be a signal that the sector where the Cocos plate is being shoved into the North American plate and the Caribbean plates is under such great pressure, there has been a major shift perhaps a folding of the lithosphere connected with all this, namely where the subduction zone is.

If we look at the maps here we can see from the lay of the land that this is a very complex intersection of more than two plates. The dotted yellow line is a line of active volcanos that line the collision zone between the North American plate and the plates being shoved under Mexico by the Pacific plate. Note that the North American plate is sliding the opposite direction as the Pacific plate. :This is a very violent region running from South America's tip all the way up to the end of the Aluetian islands off of Alaska.

Picture from a survey created by Dr. William A. Bowen UC:

A reversal of tectonic plate motion between Acapulco and Mexico City in the last half of 2006 probably didn't ease seismic strain in the region or the specter of a major earthquake anticipated there in the coming decades, says a University of Colorado at Boulder professor.

Instead of creeping toward Mexico City at about one inch per year - the expected speed from plate tectonic theory - the region near Acapulco moved in the opposite direction for six months and sped up by four times, said CU-Boulder aerospace engineering Professor Kristine Larson. The changes in motion were detected by analyzing data from GPS satellite receivers set up in Guerrero, Mexico, that were installed by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) under the direction of UNAM geophysicist Vladimir Kostoglodov and augmented by CU-Boulder.

This close up map showing how the zone under Mexico City, a depression in this chain of volcanic mountains, a place that has been subsiding for quite a while now, the surface landmass movement tracked by satellite has barely moved. As we travel westwards to Acapulco, Mexico, the movement of the land surface westwards accelerates and when we reach the oceanic trench, it is very prounounced. I would suspect the plate itself hasn't reveresed direction but rather, it signals an evolving collapse or opening of a gap that might suddenly express itself as a very violent, Mag 9+ earthquake/tsunami event.

Just as I was publishing this story, here comes a quake in the region I was talking about:

A earthquake of magnitude at least 7.5 has hit Peru, centred 160km (100 miles) from the capital, Lima, the US Geological Survey reports.
It hit near the town of Chincha Alta, and was only 18km (11 miles) below the earth's surface, the USGS said.

South America and Africa used to be joined back 200 million years ago. Many lifeforms today that dominate both continents arose in the great rift valley that widened slowly over the eons. When the greatest extinction of all, the Permian, happened, there was so little oxygen, only creature living in very deep valleys and rift zones survived and the one with the most survivors was this rift zone.

South America has moved to the west while Africa has moved northwards, creating the Alps, for example. The Mediterranean ocean is the remains of a much bigger sea. As South America shoves into the Pacific Plate, it rides over that plate as it rotates while it travels westwards and it is squeezing the Central American landmass which is why there is that goose-neck isthmus connecting North and South America, a recent geological event which happened during the last 45 million years. The invasion of North American predators wiped out many life forms in the Southern hemisphere.

The continent continues to jerk westards and rotate over the Pacific plate and this is causing a chain reaction up the entire coast and I will note that California has been shaking with 1-5 mag earthquake events with increasing frequency except for one sector of the San Andreas north of LA, east of Santa Barbara and south of the Bay Area. When this section releases its pent up energy, it will be very big.

The subsidence going on below the Gulf of California will affect the fault lines northwards if there is a major quake down there.

Now for some other earth news:

From the BBC:

The idea that the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has created a wildlife haven is not scientifically justified, a study says.

Recent studies said rare species had thrived despite raised radiation levels as a result of no human activity.

But scientists who assessed the 1986 disaster's impact on birds said the ecological effects were "considerably greater than previously assumed".

True, many growing things are recolonizing that deadly zone. But the mutation rate and the mortality rate are probably much higher due to the contamination. Interesting to see nature try to fill this void. It stands as a warning sign to us higher mammals. We don't want to cleanse the earth using nukes.

And, from NOAA, here is the latest hurricane coming our way. The Atlantic has been very quiet due to conditions in Africa.

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Comments

[JSmith]

"Some geologists have theorized that violent storms with intense rotation can trigger earthquakes..."

Interesting if true. Which ones? Got a cite for that?

[blues]

The idea of a big West Coast earthquake keeps recurring to me of late. There are many sites where you can monitor weather and earthquakes, etc. For example:

http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/

http://www.weather.gov/sat_tab.php?image=ir

[blues]

Here is the hurricane, "live":

http://www.goes.noaa.gov/browsat.html

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

I have the data for previous hurricane/earthquake events but have been too busy with burying all those dying hell hounds.

And thanks for all the links above!

[JSmith]

"There are many sites where you can monitor weather and earthquakes..."

That's nice. What we need is a strong correlation between tropical storms and earthquakes. We need to show that earthquakes follow hurricanes frequently enough so that we can say the one (probably) caused the other.

I don't think you're going to find that. This guy doesn't, either.

http://shearsensibility.blogspot.com/2007/08/hurricane-flossy-or-in-which.html

[Elaine Meinel Supkis]

Ha. Just happened with Hurricane Dean and 4.8 earthquake right in front of Dean in the islands!

[Beats by Dre]

Money can buy the devil himself.