August 11, 2011 – – Large Earthquakes by Latitude and Longitude: I downloaded all global earthquakes from 1973 through August 11, 2011; with a magnitude of 7.0M or greater. A total of 531 large global earthquakes were found. I separated the quakes into North and South Latitude and East and West Longitude. The measure for latitude was the equator, while the measure for East and West longitude was Greenwich, England or zero world longitude.
With most of the world’s landmass in the North, I was surprised how even the North/South distribution was. Additionally, East had significantly more large earthquakes than West (68% East vs. 32% West). That is because East includes Japan and Sumatra where the Pacific Tectonic Plate is subducting under several plates. Two very large earthquakes, of 9.0M or greater (Japan 2011 and Sumatra 2004), occurred in this area within the last seven years. West include the West coast of South America which includes Peru and Chile were most of the large earthquakes occur in South Latitude and West Longitude.
Over the last 2,000 years; extremely large earthquakes of 8.0 magnitude or greater, have mostly occurred in Japan, Peru, Chile and Sumatra and the Southwest Pacific. Where will the next big one take place? Probably somewhere along the “Ring of Fire” which roughly borders the Pacific Ocean and includes the West coasts of North and South America, Southern Alaska and the Aleutian Island chain, Russian and the Kamchatka Peninsula, the East coast of Japan; and the Southwest Pacific to include, the Philippines, Sumatra, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and the East coast of New Zealand.
The Master of Disaster
