Why is it so difficult for geologists to predict earthquakes?
Hi…the problem of predicting earthquakes is the lack of data that is available to seismologists before they occur…the physical processes by which they are generated means that the tremor is almost instantaneous and there are no pre earthqauke tremors which we can use to predict the “main” one. Other methods though which are being developed as predictors are stil being tested. The things which we might look at are changing ground water levels, chemical changes in ground water, radon gas emission just before the quake, background noise and some thermal changes….the problem is that things like radon gas emissions and changing water chemical concentrations often continue to rise steadily after the seismic event, rather than showing a dramatic and sudden return to normal levels before the earthquake. I suppose that the other problem is that nobody is simply willing to give their predictions given the onsecure nature of the methods above and the economic and social impacts of their pre
