Magnitude 6.0 quake hits Guatemala coast - USGS

[sabra]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - A magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit Guatemala's Pacific coast near the border with El Salvador on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

It said the quake, 64.2 miles (103.3 km) deep, was centered 60 miles (97 km) southeast of Guatemala City.

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N18109128.htm

[Roland99]

1. The earth is just sloshing back and forth down there, eh?

geez.

[dbonds]

5. Atlantis is rising

:silly:

[demoleft]

2. earth's dancing wild. damn. n/t

[bdamomma]

3. the plates are shifting, tension is building up perhaps.

[Don Caballero]

4. Man Made Climate Change at work

These quakes and storms will get bigger and badder if we do not act fast.

[Rebubula]

7. Uh-huh

Just like the Hurricanes in the gulf...

Keep pushing it...you may even believe it yourself someday.

[Don Caballero]

8. Deny climate change if you wish

It will not make it go away.

[Dappleganger]

9. Climate change has nothing to do with tectonic plates shifting.

[FedUpWithIt All]

16. That is not necessarily true...

Climate Change Can Grind Down Plate Tectonics
Michael Reilly, Discovery News
Oct. 15, 2008 -- Earth's changing climate has a spectacular ability to reface the planet. Shifting winds and ocean currents can turn rainforests to deserts and back again, while ice ages have covered whole continents in glaciers again and again through time.

Now, new evidence has emerged that, given enough time, climate change can even alter the course of plate tectonics.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/15/plate-tectonics-climate.html

And from NASA

The team of researchers sought to find a climatic reason for the dramatic changes in Earth's gravity field observed since 1997. These changes have resulted from large redistributions of mass around the globe and are characterized by an increased bulge in Earth's equator and mass movement away from the poles - an occurrence known as oblateness, which can be thought of as the difference between a football and a soccer ball; the football has a larger radius at the equator. Their results are published in the December 6 issue of Science.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=22829

[Codeine]

18. Your first link

cites the length of time for human activity as requiring millions of years of man-made erosion, so it doesn't support your claim at all. The second doesn't cite tectonics at all.

[anigbrowl]

17. I'm not so sure about that

I think the poster above asserts it far too confidently, but the oceans go through a cycle of absorbing and releasing heat (which is why the weather will be especially severe along the west coast of North America this year, as the El Nino system releases a lot of heat in the form of increased rainfall). It would not surprise me if thermal changes in the ocean affected the behavior of faults. Certainly, the risk of major earthquakes next in California will rise next year as substantially increased rainfall after several years of drought lubricates large faults.

Not a direct relationship by any means, but saying there's no connection at all might be a mistake too.

[Codeine]

19. Most earthquakes happen many miles below the surface.

Even the very shallow Haiti quake was five miles deep. It seems unlikely that rain would impact that, doesn't it? I suppose anything's possible.

[liberal N proud]

10. Earthquakes are not man made

or effected by climate change.

Man is changing the climate but that does not cause earthquakes.

[Codeine]

11. Idiocy.

You are scientifically illiterate to an almost painful degree.

[dbonds]

20. Not exactly...

Although I doubt in this case it was caused by climate change, it can be a factor. For example, in that particular region when the ocean levels rise even a small bit due to the ice melt, that puts a lot more weight/stress on that fault which can cause the fault to slip (quake). Same can be said of the weight of the ice melting on the northern plates. The removing of weight will cause the plates to shift. The China earthquake a couple years ago had as a contributing factor the weight of the water in a new man made lake (not a climate change thing, but to demonstrate weight on a plate is a factor).

[kestrel91316]

21. Earthquakes and climate have nothing to do with each other.

[jotsy]

6. Been monitoring the USGS website as part of the newsie me routine.

started a few months ago, just a couple of times a week. Checking daily now, and it certainly seems busier. Seems right wingers aren't the only thing spoiling for a rumble

[haele]

14. It tends to seem a bit busier a month or so either side of the equinox timeframe

But magnitude actually means very little when tracking earthquakes. You should be checking swarm activity as indicators of high activity, and that's not really increased over the decades that geologic activity has been measured.
From comparison of the decades of the 1979 - 20009, there was a larger incidence of swarms and high magnitude quakes in the 80's than there were in the 2000's.

Now, shallow quakes appear to be affected by aquifer changes and there seems to be an increase in shallow quakes where there's heavy drilling of oil or other liquids. But even then, those quakes seem to be of smaller magnitude - enough to shake cans off shelves, shake the occasional mobile home off poorly thought-out jackstand foundations, and scare the bejeebus out of the locals watching signs and trees sway, but not enough to do serious structural or infrastructure damage.

I don't think climate change has very much to do with plate-based activity.

Haele

[Codeine]

12. This is normal, folks.

The Ring of Fire ain't nothin' new.

[IndianaGreen]

15. Shallow earthquakes of 4 mag in Oklahoma and New Mexico, just days apart

Last 2 Weeks of Earthquakes

Date: 18-JAN-2010
Mag: 4.1
Depth: 5.0
Loc: NEW MEXICO

Date: 15-JAN-2010
Mag: 4.0
Depth: 5.0
Loc: OKLAHOMA

http://www.iris.edu/seismon/zoom/events/?lon=-104.72&lat=36.86

[happyslug]

13. This is on the same division of the tectonic plates as the Haiti Quake

The Caymen Trench starts just West of Haiti and continues into Central America between Guatemala and Honduras as the Motagua Fault. The Two earthquakes may be related but at opposite ends of the Caymen Trench. We can NOT say more the "may" for it is still unknown how different parts of the same fault interacts except that it has some affect.

More on the Caymen Trench
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cayman_Trench

More on the Motagua Fault
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motagua_Fault

United States Geological Survey web site:
http://www.usgs.gov/

USGS Earthquake Site:
http://www.usgs.gov/hazards/earthquakes/
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/