Just before 1.00 am this morning I was woken up by the house shaking. It transpires that an earthquake of 5.3 magnitude took place and the epicentre was near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, the worst quake for nearly 25 years.
The BBC report is here: ‘Earthquake hits much of England’
We had a similar experience on 22nd September 2002, just before midnight, lasting for about 15 seconds. On that occasion the epicentre was much closer to home and had a magnitude of 4.8. Apparently, our house lies close to the ‘Midland Microcraton along the Malvern Lineament.’
Previous UK quakes and magnitude:
April 2007 – Folkestone, Kent (magnitude 4.3)
December 2006 – Dumfries and Galloway (3.5)
September 2002 – Dudley, West Midlands (5.0)
October 2001 – Melton Mowbray (4.1)
September 2000 – Warwick (4.2)
April 1990 – Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire (5.1)
July 1984 – Nefyn, North Wales (5.4)
June 1931 – in North Sea near Great Yarmouth (6.1)
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Norway’s Arctic archipelago Svalbard was hit last week by Norway’s biggest earth quake ever, 6,2 on the Richter scale.
One wonders what this means to oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, when even the slightest leakage can be harmful to the benthic environment, fish, marine mammals and sea birds etc.
Not to dismiss the enviormental risks due to oil exploration consequences I’m interested in the potential for increase sesmic and volcanic activity with the current minima in solar and terrestrial magnetic field strength.
My unscientific monitoring of http://www.GDACS.org leads me to suspect we’re on an upswing in the former and the latter will be with us for coming decades.
A level 7 eruption like Tambora in circa 1815 is due any time. While the eruption raised the level of CO2 to 450ppm over the succeeding decade the H2S effects resulted in the ‘year without a summer’.
Could be a tad colder soon.
450ppm? Strange how that decadal record doesn’t seem to show up on the IPCC’s hockey stick graph?
Yes, we are actually overdue (10-15 years) for another (1992) Pinatubo scale (level 6?) eruption which will drop temperatures by 0.5C so a level 7 will undo the entire past century of warming.
Haven’t seen the 450ppm figure? That might be because Keeling threw out all but French volumetric measurements that read 20ppm low due to the H2SO4 use drying the air. Funny the Swedes and Germans didn’t care for the method but carried out the vast majority of 69000 readings Keeling discarded. Now he uses a Siemen’s black box to measure the CO2 via IR, after drying with H2SO4, naturally. Calibration procedures are uncertain.
Hansen wasn’t the original poseur, evidently.
I rode out one of those middle of the night, 5. something earthquakes once.
It makes you appreciate the daytime quakes, believe me.