Mereja.Forum

[Messele Zewdie Ejeta]

A major earthquake occurred off the coast of Japan yesterday.

Newton’s universal law of gravitation formulated orbital forcing using the masses of celestial bodies and the distance between them.

It would be intuitive to imagine that tide level fluctuations, which get higher during full moon phase, suggest signals of orbital forcing.

Opening up Newton’s law of universal gravitation and studying it in more detail may be very complex. An effort at it may be very rewarding in the long run for interested researchers.

One of these efforts was reviewing recorded major earthquakes with respect to moon phases. A very preliminary study was published several years ago as a proceeding paper by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Below is a link to that proceeding paper.

Observed Association between Historical Major Earthquakes and Lunisolar Alignments

That preliminary study was done after a peer reviewed one, which is linked below, that looked into orbital forcing as a factor in the predictability of meteorological variability.

Validation of predicted meteorological drought in California using analogous orbital geometries

This study was an attempt to attribute climate change to natural variability and man made greenhouse gas emissions. This attribution effort also involves complex science.

For interested researchers, it becomes easier when the focus is on whether extreme events are in phase or out of phase of orbital forcing using moon phases as a proxy. In phase points more to natural variability. Out of phase likely points to man made effects.

[Messele Zewdie Ejeta]

Interested researchers may also find a recent post about in phase and out of phase studies to understand the climate crisis informative.

Orbital Forcing as a Natural Variable in Climate Science

In this post, I have added a link to the preliminary study about recoded major earthquakes.