Nexus - 0302 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Earthquake Prediction Breakthroughs Earthquake Prediction Breakthroughs [Several days before going to print, I requested that Stan give NEXUS readers an update on his successes regarding the prediction of earthquakes. As usual he sent me more than enough information, so what follows is the result of my editor's razor. People interested in more details should get onto the Internet and visit his web page at: http://www.iinet.net.au/~standeyo. His success rate is astounding! Ed.] n September of 1995, I discovered a web site on the Internet which was operated by the US Navy. It provided me with computer maps of the entire world twice daily. These maps showed me the absolute temperature of the sea surface across the entire planet. In the beginning, I was impressed with the colourful images and stored them on my disc for later reference. Some weeks later, I discovered a special global image which the US Navy had just declassified earlier in 1995. This image showed the force of gravity as it varied across the entire Earth. When I saw this image I was amazed. It clearly showed every likely earthquake fault line on the Earth. For some reason, the variations in the force of gravity were most pronounced where there is a fault line. I could see the ‘cracks' where no fault had been obvious before. It was like having a crystal ball—but it did not tell me how to determine when the fault lines would become active. I began to think about what information might work in conjunction with this gravi- tational anomaly map to help me predict the likely dates of major quakes. Suddenly, I remembered those sea surface temperature maps which I had stored on my disc. I wondered if the accuracy of the temperatures was such that I could see a tempera- ture change in the areas of the Earth's surface where rapidly increasing shear or compres- sive forces in the mantle were producing temperature changes. Quickly, I retrieved the images. At first, I could not see any obvious signs of tempera- ture changes which might indicate the stress buildups. Then I realised that the small changes might be visible if I were to compute the difference between two or more images over a small time span of several days. The idea worked! Immediately, 1 saw areas of thermal changes which preceded major earthquakes by about two to four days. I quickly established a folder to hold the OTIS (Optimum Thermal Interpolation System) images which I now receive twice daily from the US Navy's FNMOC (Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center)—which is, by the way, one of the world's foremost oceanographic and atmospheric analysis and fore- casting centres. During the first week, while I was collecting this new data for my ‘crystal ball’, I found another image which the FNMOC could supply to me. It was a wave-height model (code- named "WAM") for the world and is published on the Internet twice a day. It shows colour patterns which represent the average wave-height at any given point on the surface. With this image I was able to eliminate those areas where I saw severe thermal changes on my OTIS change images from the ‘likely quake’ list, because I could see that storms were generating the obvious temperature differences. This method does run into trouble when a storm occurs over a large area which is also a budding quake site. In this case, the temperature changes of the storm overshadow the possible stress-induced temperature changes in the mantle beneath the ocean floor. Still, as crude as this method is at present, I am able to anticipate the location and, to some degree, the severity of 50 to 85 per cent of all major earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and storms about two to four days ahead of time. You might say it gives me the ability to make ‘geochange’ forecasts... (Certainly, my accuracy is no worse than the weather forecasts we see on our television news programs!) © 1996 by Stan Deyo WA Texas Trading PO Box 71 Kalamunda, WA 6076, Australia Phone: +61 (0)9 291 8154 Email Internet: standeyo@iinet.net.au NEXUS © 11 © 1996 by Stan Deyo FEBRUARY-MARCH 1996