Is the increased earthquake activity just a coincidence?
Although earthquakes happen everyday at some point on the planet, the seismic activity in the last 24 hours has been very high.
In Pakistan late Saturday (local time) a 5.9 magnitude quake was felt and others have appeared in Russia, Japan and Argentina.
There was even a small 2.4 magnitude earthquake near Dillsburg, York County, Pennsylvania, and of course a large number have been seen at Yellowstone Park, the site of a supervolcano. Oddly enough, at the time of writing, the reports on seismic activity at Yellowstone have not been updated, even though quakes higher than magnitude 3.0 have occurred since the last entry. This might be due to staff availability over the weekend, or someone does not want the figures to be shown for some reason. Click Here to read my article on the recent quake activity at Yellowstone.
However, the largest earthquakes have happened more recently, near the North coast of Papua, Indonesia, with two quakes registering 7.6 and 7.5 on the Richter scale. A number of strong aftershocks followed.
The Indonesian Meteorology and Seismology Agency issued a tsunami alert but it was revoked within an hour after it was determined the epicenter was on land.
Apart from cut power lines and some damage to buildings, there have been no reports of deaths or injuries.
Indonesia is well known for earthquakes and volcanoes, and falls inside the Pacific “Ring of Fire.” A huge earthquake off western Indonesia caused the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed around 230,000 people.
Many are keeping a close eye on Yellowstone at the moment, even though the quakes there have not been that large. However, the location of the tremors is more worrying and there are fears that an eruption might be possible. The eruption of a supervolcano can affect the entire planet (depending on the size and duration). When such an eruption occurred at Lake Toba (Indonesia) about 75,000 years ago, the Earth was plunged into a volcanic winter, eradicating an estimated 60% of the human population.
The recent increase in earthquake activity may be a coincidence, but it makes you wonder whether something much worse is heading our way.
