But existing equipment would need to be some 50 times more sensitive in order to detect a precursor to an earthquake.
kept by the University of Nevada at Reno. Every five minutes, thousands of stations around the world record their GPS positions. These observations allow scientists to detect even very slight motions. If the ground moved, Bletery and Nocquet could see it in GPS data.
Singling out GPS stations situated around the known locations of earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.0 or higher, Bletery and Nocquet studied those stations' recorded positions — and how they changed — within the 48 hours leading up to the respective quake. They calculated how well the actual motion matched the motion that they expected each quake to cause.
The researchers found that, in the final two hours before a quake, the ground's motion often began to align with the expected motion. That alignment seemed to intensify as the time of the quake approached. Although slight, this pattern did not generally appear when Bletery and Nocquet examined randomly selected two-hour windows that mostly didn't have earthquakes.The motion in those final two hours, then, may contain the precursors that seismologists have long sought.
"That's a huge technological gap," says Bletery."We just don't have the technology yet to do it." Adding more GPS stations may help, and Bletery expects scientists to do just that, but it won't be enough in itself. Still, Bletery believes it is a sign of progress that may interest scientists. For one, he says, their discovery provides evidence that earthquakes aren't chaotic, instantaneous events due to faults abruptly moving. Rather, the two-hour preview suggests that earthquakes may have precursor elements that could give them away before they happen.
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