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Western US Drought Has Made Earth's Crust Rise
Loss of both groundwater and water stored in surface reservoirs in the drought-striken western U.S. isn't just expensive and contentious: it's evidently making the earth's crust rise in the West. Scripps researchers say that the average rise across a wide stretch of the West Coast is approximately one sixth of an inch.
Scientists came to this conclusion by studying data collected from hundreds of GPS sensors across the Western U.S., installed primarily to detect small changes in the ground due to earthquakes. But the GPS data can also be used to show very small changes in elevation. The study specifically examined GPS stations on bedrock or very thin soil because it provides the most accurate measurement of groundwater loss, said Duncan Agnew, professor of geophysics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Areas with thick soil, such as farms, can see the ground sinking as the soil dries out. But Agnew said the bedrock underneath that soil is actually rising.
The highest uplift of the Earth occurred in California's mountains because there is so much water below them, Agnew said. The uplift was less in Nevada and the Great Basin.
Only one sixth of an inch? Are you sure?
My Galileo positioning system tells me that the earth's crust rose by more than 113km.
So it was like a frozen pizza or something?
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Science and inch are not compatible.
What's an inch? Or a sixth of an inch? Can't compute.
It was good enough for the British scientists of the 19th century, but young people these days are made of wimpier stuff :P
Large portions of North America and Europe are currently rising because the weight of glaciers that once pushed them down has been removed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
You mean this: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear... ?
Timely,
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
Making the earth's crust rise should not directly affect the strike-slip San Andreas fault at all. However, it has been anecdotally noted on syzygyjob.com forums that thrust quakes seem to be on the rise, along with hypothesizing that the rising crust might release friction allowing exactly that.
For my own part, I've noticed a large increase of small quakes surrounding the great elliptical basin, the southwest of which coincides with the rising sierra nevada; and occasional time-coincident radial forays into the same basin.
So I half wonder if the rising isn't part of a larger-scale process.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
%22feed%22%3A%227day_m25%22%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22autoUpdate%22%3Atrue%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3Atrue%2C%22timeZone%22%3A%22local%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A[[30.221101852485987%2C-131.30859375]%2C[43.229195113965005%2C-106.69921875]]%2C%22overlays%22%3A{%22plates%22%3Atrue}%2C%22viewModes%22%3A{%22map%22%3Atrue%2C%22list%22%3Afalse%2C%22settings%22%3Atrue%2C%22help%22%3Afalse
You really shouldn't try to type during an earthquake.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Yes, the two findings (CA rising and 6.0 equake) are closely related. As has become common knowledge, the San Andreas fault is about to slip in a majorily massive way, and all of the USA east of it is going to sink into the Atlantic Ocean.
Oh. And what RealHocusLocus said about you typing during an equake...
Will
Because that's its accuracy for knowing your absolute position in a short period of time. If you use it to determine relative position over a long period of time, it's much more accurate. Apparently there's something called "Carrier phase tracking" which has an accuracy of 2mm for surveying. Or they could have augmented it with ground-based transmitters.
Still, 4mm is quite a small distance to measure with GPS, even with a 2mm accuracy mode.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
That accuracy limit is only for real time. For survey and timing purposes, averaging is used blur out the imperfections and results in inch/centimeter or nanosecond accuracy; assisted receivers (DGPS, WAAS, etc) vastly reduce the time to get this accuracy, but aren't available everywhere on the earth's surface.
So I half wonder if the rising isn't part of a larger-scale process.
IANAG, but I think the Rocky Mountains are clear evidence of this larger-scale process.