When identifying the cause of an earthquake, it makes sense to look below the ground – years of research point us to tectonic plates and faults as the key culprits. But should we actually be looking to the sky?
That's what scientists from MIT now suggest, claiming that increased heavy snowfall and rain linked to climate change could increasingly contribute to earthquakes worldwide.
The researchers made these conclusions based on how weather patterns in northern Japan have seemingly contributed to a new 'swarm' of earthquakes – a pattern of multiple, ongoing quakes – that is thought to have begun in 2020.
“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],” said study author Dr William Frank, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, atmospheric and planetary Sciences.
“So, climate obviously has an impact on the response of the solid earth, and part of that response is earthquakes.”
The research, published in the journal Science Advances, investigated seismic activity in Japan's Noto Peninsula – an area hit by hundreds of earthquakes in recent years, including a magnitude 7.6 quake in January 2024.
The MIT team, along with their colleagues in Japan, tried to identify patterns that could explain these regular quakes. They found that while earthquakes before 2020 appeared sporadic and unrelated, quakes after that year were strongly linked to weather conditions.
“We can see that the timing of these earthquakes lines up extremely well with multiple times where we see intense snowfall,” Frank said. “It’s well-correlated with earthquake activity. And we think there’s a physical link between the two.”
It’s believed that snow and rainwater could affect the underground ‘pore fluid pressure’ – the amount of pressure that fluids inside Earth’s cracks exert within the bedrock. This in turn can have a major impact on how fast seismic waves travel underground.
While the study occurred in Japan, the team believes that climate change could have a major impact on the planet’s earthquakes in the near future.
“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,” said Frank. “That will have an impact for sure.”
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