Short-term earthquake prediction

K. Aki, A. Jin, A. Gabrielov, V. Keilis-Borok, Z. Liu, P. Shebalin, D. Turcotte, I. Zaliapin, 


1. We have developed a methodology for the short-term earthquake prediction, with lead time 
months.  It is named "Reverse Detection of Precursors" (RDP), since it considers precursors 
in reverse order of their appearance. This makes possible to detect precursors undetectable 
by direct analysis. 

2. Possible physical mechanisms underlying RDP are described in terms of geodynamics and, 
alternatively, non-linear dynamics. 

3. Methodology is put to test for California, Japan, and East Mediterranean. Two recent 
earthquakes - San Simeon, California, M6.5, and Tokachi-oki, Japan, M8.1, have been predicted 
about 6 months in advance each, without false alarms and failures to predict. Retrospectively, 
RDP was applied to 22 more strong earthquakes in the above regions.

4. So far, we have used, as precursors, only premonitory seismicity patterns, and started to 
explore attenuation of coda waves. RDP has promising applications to other data and to prediction 
of other critical phenomena besides earthquakes. In particular, it might vindicate some short-term 
earthquake precursors, previously rejected as giving too many false alarms.

5. There is current alarm for an area in California. We suggest to explore this area by InSAR, 
GPS, and other methods, developed in CIT and JPL.