Can the size of a large earthquake be foretold just 10 seconds after it starts?

By Alka Tripathy-Lang

June 26, 2019

When the massive magnitude-9.1 earthquake rocked the seafloor off the coast of Tohoku, Japan, in March 2011, the Japanese Earthquake Early Warning System sent alerts to locations that were predicted to shake at or above a level 5 on Japan’s shaking intensity scale, which should have provided tens of seconds of warning. While warnings issued near the epicenter of the earthquake saved lives, places like the greater Tokyo region received no warning because the predicted intensities were underestimated (Cryanoski, 2011). A more accurate prediction of the earthquake magnitude in the seconds after rupture began might have improved earthquake and tsunami predictions, which could have saved more lives. Scientists say that one approach to improving early estimates of earthquake magnitude is to answer a question that has plagued them for years:

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