Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Improved Fit for Southern California Earthquake Data (2000-2009)

I was successful in automating the fit process and obtained an improved fit for the SCEDC earthquakes of the last decade. The fit involved a search for the coefficients of log-log g and this time I used the magnitudes of the histogram intervals as the variable in the polynomial for the fit to avoid the large numbers that result from using k. The function minimized was the rms error of log-log g and the histogram points were unweighted. The fit shows some curvature above M 4.5 and thinking that this was an end effect I extrapolated g from M 4.0 but there was not any noticable change in the results.


The new fit shows higher values for the earthquake rates above the peak in r.


edit: From the occupancy of states point of view the model indicates that more M5 earthquakes occurring means that there fewer dormant M6+ earthquakes waiting to happen. So higher rates may bode better for the future.

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