A Quake Note

You know something is going on when the first email on a lazy Sunday morning is from a buddy on an offshore oil rig in the GOM:

“,,,just sitting here drilling this well and we popped a 7+ mag quake south of Argentina…

Oilman2 tends to watch such things when he’s got a bit down in the Gulf.  As you may recall,this was a little slower arriving  than I had anticipated (Friday would have been more to my liking theory-wise)  but we’ve now had a 7.8 quake in the area down off the Antarctic early this morning:

The November 17, 2013 earthquake in the Scotia Sea, to the northwest of the South Orkney Islands, occurred as the result of either left-lateral strike slip faulting on an east-west oriented plane, or right-lateral faulting on a north-south plane. The location of the event adjacent to the east-west oriented plate boundary between the Antarctica and Scotia Sea plates implies the left-lateral faulting scenario is most likely. At the latitude of this earthquake, the Antarctica plate moves eastwards with respect to the Scotia Sea plate at a velocity of 6 mm/yr

If our read of the earthquake data we have been following is correct, we should expect one (or two, possibility of three) more of these 7.0 quakes.before the month is out.

Not a biggy in terms of impact of humans, but worth mentioning as we head into the period around this winters solstice when planetary stresses are high, perhaps especially so with the Sun’s output near 200-year lows.  We’re certainly open to the notion that global cooling could trigger unusual tectonics as solar warming/expansion steadies or even reverses.

Meantime, reduced solar output may be causative in some of the recent unusual high precipitation events (Colorado, Philippines), which now includes (this morning) “Torrential rain, snow storms and flooding hit the Middle East.”

And speaking of the Philippines, while “Aid agencies say typhoon shows need for action of climate change” it might also underscore a teaching moment to remind the PTB that colder air holds less moisture than warm and if the Sun’s output is down, well, “B” follows “A” does it not?

Hmmm…

author avatar
George Ure
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/George-Ure/e/B0098M3VY8%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share UrbanSurvival Bio: https://urbansurvival.com/about-george-ure/
Toggle Dark Mode