Question: Do you believe that in the future, you will be able to extend the warning times for countries liable to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions?

James Verdon answered on 23 Jun 2012:

Hi boxofstrawbs,

I think that’s something we’d all like to do, but it’s actually pretty difficult. We can try to predict volcanic eruptions if there’s a lot of small earthquakes leading up to them, and often volcanoes can expand by several centimeters as the magma chamber fills up before an eruption. But sometimes volcanoes erupt without any earthquakes or expansion, and sometimes we see all the precursors – expansion and earthquakes – but then no eruption happens.

With earthquakes, we try and look at the amount of stress building up on a fault, and we look at historical rates (some faults trigger with a regular time period, say every 50 years or 100 years or so). But I don’t think we’ll ever be able to say ‘this volcano or this fault will trigger in exactly two weeks’ or something. What we can do is identify areas that are at risk – to say something like ‘this fault or this volcano is likely to trigger sometime in the next 10 years’. Then, the most important things are preparation and education.

Japan is a great example of what can be done with education and preparation. Japan gets loads of earthquakes, so if you want to build something in Japan, there are really strict regulations – the buildings have to be completely reinforced so that they won’t collapse. Also, the people are all taught what to do in an earthquake – get outside and away from buildings if possible. If you can’t, get under a table, or get under a doorway, which will give you some protection from things falling on your head.

We can’t stop volcanoes and earthquakes from happening, and we’ll never be able to get warnings out in time all the time, so the most important thing is to teach people how to respond to give them the best possible chance of surviving.