Study: Oklahoma has up to 80 percent chance of 5.0 earthquake this year; normal seismicity won't ...

Study: Oklahoma has up to 80 percent chance of 5.0 earthquake this year; normal seismicity won't return by 2025

The probability of a magnitude 5.0 earthquake in Oklahoma this year is as high as 80 percent, with no evidence to suggest the state will revert to pre-2009 seismicity levels by 2025, according to a research paper published Wednesday.

Appearing in Science Advances, the latest UC Santa Cruz and Oklahoma Geological Survey research finds that a previous study substantially underestimates the state’s induced seismicity risk. A Stanford University study published in the same journal in November reported a 37 percent chance of a 5.0 occurring in 2017, with seismicity approaching “historic levels within a few years.”

The new study’s authors agree with the Stanford study’s pronouncement that the rate of smaller quakes is decreasing.

But moderate quakes aren’t quite adhering as strongly to that downward trend, according to the UC Santa Cruz and OGS study. Nor will Oklahoma return any time soon to its tectonic history of about two “felt” earthquakes a year (considered in this context to be magnitude 3.0 or stronger).

Read more: http://www.tulsaworld.com/earthquakes/study-oklahoma-has-up-to-percent-chance-of-earthquake-this/article_efa32725-bfa8-5d05-beac-d998474773cd.html