A China-led international team has reported a new pre-earthquake phenomenon that has shown strong predictive potential for major earthquakes since 2022 with minimal failures.
The anomalous seismic, magnetic and ionospheric resonance signals they observed – termed “seismo-ripples” by the researchers – are ringlike disturbance patterns triggered before earthquakes happen.
Their findings challenge the long-standing scientific belief that these events are unpredictable, opening up a promising new path to earthquake prediction.
“Historically, earthquake prediction has been considered nearly infeasible,” said the team from institutes in mainland China and Taiwan, along with Brazil and Japan, in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal NPJ Natural Hazards on Sunday.