A new study suggested that climate change could contribute to increasing earthquakes worldwide.
As per the BBC report, research published in the journal Science Advances investigated the seismic activities in Japan’s Noto Peninsula, an area that was hit by hundreds of earthquakes in recent years, including a January 2024 7.6 magnitude quake.
The researchers found that earthquakes before 2020 appeared sporadic and unrelated, while quakes after that were strongly linked to weather conditions.
Dr William Frank, the author of the study and assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, said, “We see that snowfall and other environmental loading at the surface impacts the stress state underground, and the timing of intense precipitation events is well-correlated with the start of (the earthquake swarm in Japan).
He noted, “So, climate obviously has an impact on the response of the solid earth, and part of that response is earthquakes.”
Frank further explained, “We can see that the timing of these earthquakes lines up extremely well with multiple times where we see intense snowfall. It’s well-correlated with earthquake activity. And we think there’s a physical link between the two.”
Frank concluded, “If we’re going into a climate that’s changing, with more extreme precipitation events, and we expect a redistribution of water in the atmosphere, oceans, and continents, that will change how the Earth’s crust is loaded. That will have an impact for sure.”
The researchers also believed that although the research was Japan-centric, climate change could have a major impact on the planet’s earthquakes in the near future.
