A new study from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory all but guarantees a sizable temblor will shake up Southern California in the near future.
The study, published earlier this month by Earth and Space Science journal, claims there is a 99.9 percent chance of a magnitude 5.0 earthquake or greater in the next two and half years.
The study used GPS and airborne radar data to look at land distortion caused by the 2014 La Habra earthquake that measured magnitude 5.1. The study says the next quake could occur anywhere within a 60-mile radius of the 2014 quake.
Several seismologists who study earthquakes were surprised by the paper and its specific conclusions.
“As far as I’m concerned there has never been a successful earthquake prediction and a scientific breakthrough would be required for us to make a scientifically based prediction,” Thomas Heaton, director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory at Caltech told the LA News Group.
Read more at LA Daily News.com.
