Does climate change affect earthquake risks?
Co-sponsored by
JpGU, DGGV, and AGU
Meanwhile, droughts that are expected to intensify in a warming climate have been identified as another potential trigger for increased seismicity. Alternating periods of drought and heavy rain have been shown to cause the “rise and fall” of mountain ranges (Argus et al., 2017), the resulting stress changes of which could potentially be felt on nearby faults, particularly where these faults are already in a critical state. Amos et al. (2014) also showed that excessive groundwater pumping, which is exacerbated during droughts, may cause stress regime change on nearby faults by “unweighting” the earth’s crust. In the Appenines, trends in the temporal correlation between geodetic displacement and seismicity indicate that the poroelastic deformation resulting from karst aquifer recharge is modulating the occurrence rate of seismicity (D’Agostino et al., 2018, Picozzi et al., 2022)
Moreover, a recent study (Steer et al., 2020) shows that typhoons, which are expected to intensify in the future, could temporarily change the seismicity of a region significantly. Super typhoons could cause extensive erosion and landslides, removing enormous loads that could then change the state of stress in the upper part of the Earth’s crust. Li et al. (2020) arrived at a similar conclusion, attributing several M>6 earthquakes in Central Taiwan to typhoon-induced erosion and landslides.
From the foregoing, are we now really uncovering how deeply sensitive our planet is, and how interconnected its systems are? Could changes in our atmospheric, hydrospheric and cryospheric systems as a result of climate change really bring about damaging geospheric processes such as earthquakes? Where are we in terms of understanding this connection? How will this affect the way we evaluate and mitigate seismic risks? These are among the questions we are hoping our proposed Great Debate session can shed light to.
Session assets
08:30–08:35
5-minute convener introduction
08:35–08:40
Presentation by Prof. Jeffrey Freymueller (Michigan State University)
08:40–08:45
Presentation by Prof. Dr. Andrea Hampel (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
08:45–08:50
Presentation by Prof. Dr. Niels Hovius ( GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences)
08:50–08:55
Presentation by Dr. Jean Paul Ampuero (Géoazur Laboratory/IRD Institut de Reherche pour le Développement/Université Côte d'Azur)
08:55–09:15
Round of Questions for the Panel
09:15–10:05
Open Discussion
10:05–10:13
Final Remarks from the Panel (2 minutes per panel member)
10:13–10:15
Convenor's Wrap-up
