Future Earthquake Information

Future Possiblity of Earthquake in the area.

Northern Part of Pakistan, India and Nepal lies in Danger zone as estimated by (Bilham et al., 200 in Science magzine). The possibility of high magnitude exists in the region if low magnitude earthquakes does not occur.


- Some Earthquake Facts and Predictions (Courtesy: CIRES - http://cires.colorado.edu)

The Mw7.6 Kashmir 8 October 2005 earthquake occurred in a region where a great plate-boundary earthquake has long been considered overdue. Although the earthquake resulted in widespread devastation, it is doubful that it has released more than one tenth of the cumulative elastic energy that has developed since the previous great earthquake in the region in 1555 or earlier. This overview places the earthquake in a historical and structural context.

The figures below, published in May 2001 and in May 2005 respectively, illustrate the slip potential developed along the arc (left: red=certain, pink=possible) and the possible size and locations of earthquakes in these regions based on recent findings (right). The area of each yellow region is proportional to estimates of potential elastic energy to be released (Bilham and Wallace, 2005). The Kashmir earthquake overlapped the extreme left-hand rectangle. Click for larger image with the Kashmir earthquake superimposed.





Historical Earthquakes in the Himalaya Also see Stacey Martin's ASC page. previous catastrophic earthquake in Kashmir occurred in 1555 but we have insufficient data to assign it a magnitude. Five decades earlier a moderate Mw~7.3 earthquake damaged Kabul, and a great 600-km-long 8.2<Mw<8.6 rupture in the central Himalaya destroyed monasteries in Tibet and buildings in Agra. Moderate earthquakes similar to the 2005 Kashmir event occurred in 1885 (Mw=7.5), 1905 (Mw7.8 Kangra), in 1842 (Mw7.5 Kunnar), and in 1974 (Mw=7.4 Pattan).