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  • 2016-03-01 (xsd:date)
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  • Concerns of 'Major' West Coast Earthquake Growing Due to Carbon Monoxide Spike? (en)
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  • In late February 2016, several conspiracy theory-type web sites reported that carbon monoxide levels had spiked on the West Coast, and that these unprecedented levels signaled the arrival of a massive earthquake: The above-quoted article was primarily based on data from earth.nullschool.net, a site that gleans and compiles data from various sites to make a visual map of global weather. While it did show an unusual amount of carbon monoxide along the West Coast in February 2016, the site warned that its data is not always correct: Articles claiming that there was a major spike in carbon monoxide levels on the West Coast are all based on the same set of data from NASA's GEOS-5 software. On 1 March 2016, NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office released a statement explaining the unusual uptick in carbon monoxide levels: The perception of higher carbon monoxide levels was, then, caused by faulty equipment. But even if the spike had been real, a rise in carbon monoxide levels is not a clear indication of a future earthquake: Many of the web sites claiming that an earthquake was imminent pointed to a February 2010 article in Nature Asia, which paraphrased an academic paper published by geophysicist Dr. Ramesh Singh (et al) to explain how carbon monoxide levels rose just before a 7.6 magnitude earthquake in western India in 2001: GEOS-5 is a NASA chem model, showing a high concentration of carbon monoxide (CO) along the west coast of California since Feb. 26, Singh told us in an e-mailed statement: While atmospheric fluctuations and perturbations have indeed been recorded before major earthquakes, this is still very much research in progress. In fact, seismologist John Vidale (director of the University of Washington's Pacific Northwest Seismic Network) took issue with these web sites connecting Singh's data with the alleged carbon monoxide rise, calling it alarmist nonsense: Back in the 1970s, when we were looking all possible ways to predict earthquakes, there was an idea that the Earth cracks up in the area about to have an earthquake. And when that cracks, fluid and gases might come out of the ground, he said, noting that back then a theory emerged that watching for those gases could indicate where an earthquake was about to hit. Vidale also said that the data from NASA's GEOS-5 modeling software could be explained by slow-moving air and smoke pollution from forest fires: Superstation 95, the web site that first propagated and promulgated this rumor, has a habit of creating dire-sounding stories out of half-truths and misinformation, such as a claim that cargo ships had ceased travel (in a horrific economic sign), an article which heavily exaggerated the effects the Fukushima nuclear disaster had on marine life (using photos stolen from other, unrelated sites), and a prediction that World War III would break out by 28 February 2016 (it didn't). (en)
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