Study of the relation between luni-solar periodicities and earthquake events

TL;DR

This study confirms that strong earthquakes in Southern California are statistically correlated with specific lunisolar tidal cycles, and extends previous research by analyzing phase relationships and assessing the methodology's effectiveness.

Contribution

It revisits and confirms prior findings on earthquake correlations with tidal cycles and introduces phase diagram analysis to better understand earthquake timing.

Findings

Strong earthquakes correlate with 12 hr. and 18.6 y. cycles.

High probability of no earthquakes when phases of key cycles are within [0-0.5].

Statistical methods are inadequate for semi-lunar and fortnightly components.

Abstract

We revisit the work of Kilston and Knopoff (1983) to study the correlation of earthquakes with the main lunisolar tidal components in the limited zone of the Southern California region, with a considerably bigger amount of data. By adopting the same methodology as these authors, we confirm their results, i.e. that strong earthquakes with M >= 6 show a statistically significant correlation with half day and precession cycles, with respective periods 12 hr. and 18.6 y., while weaker earthquakes show a correlation with the annual cycle. Moreover we extended the study to the analysis of bi-modal phase to phase diagrams, leading to a very high probability of a lack of earthquake occurrences when both phases of the 12 hr. and 18.6 y. cycles are inside the [0 - 0.5] interval. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the statistical method is not really appropriate to study the correlation with the semi-lunar day and the fortnightly tidal components.