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Global body predicts powerful quake
THE GEORISK Commission of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics has warned of a high intensity earthquake at some places in the country in the near future.
THE GEORISK Commission of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics has warned of a high intensity earthquake at some places in the country in the near future.
Vice-chairman of the commission and senior geophysicist at the Indian Institute of Technology Prof Ramesh Singh said monitoring by Global Positioning System (GPS) has revealed that the Indian plate was moving on a average 4-5 cm a year.
This had put the Himalayan region under serious threat of an earthquake. “The region”, he added, “did not experience any high intensity earthquake in the last 50-80 years”.
Prof Singh told HT that scientists around the world were making efforts to understand and evolve techniques to use traditional parameters for earthquake forewarning.
He said that scientists had so far failed to taste success using these parameters.
The traditional parameters used to forecast earthquakes includes changes in chlorophyll, sea surface temperature, thermal temperature, surface latent heat flux, random concentration, animals behavior, subsurface water level on land and relative humidity, air temperature, water vapour and total electron content change in the atmosphere.
Attempts to make accurate predictions by analysing the positions of planets and the moon did not help much, the professor said.
“There are various scientific groups working on the subject. They try to make warning and send e-mails to their counterparts across the globe. This is a very positive thing. However, earthquake prediction is a very controversial area and unless some accurate method is developed scientists must restrict themselves from going public. But at the same time, the public must know how to protect themselves from any impending earthquake,” he said.
Reacting to the Thursday prediction of an earthquake in certain parts of Assam, Prof Singh urged scientists not air their predictions since it creates panic.
He said after he came to know about the warning of the Madras University geologist’s prediction, he had analysed various parameters and did not find any appreciable changes.
He appealed to scientists who analyse various parameters to study the precursors of an earthquake to follow an integrated approach. “Scientists must see all the parameters, just like a doctor who confirms a patient’s disease only after studying certain pathological reports,” he added.
