The African plate is moving north and pressing against the Asian plate.  It is moving more slowly now than a few million years ago due to the resistance of the sediments in the contact zone, north to southern Siberia.  The outer edge of the contortion and damage to the rocks on the south side of the Asian plate is marked by a line of volcanoes, and these have been extending northwards as the pressure increases.  The pressure is the cause of the thickened crust beneath Tibet and the continuing uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, but the greatest pressures are in the contact zone of the Himalayan mountains and the Hindu Kush.  Even if the movement of the Indian plate ceased today, the contact zone remains under tremendous pressure, which would probably result in further earthquakes.  The underlying sialic layer is thick and will continue rising upwards until it reaches its equilibrium position relative to the simatic layer underneath.  Regarding the effects of climate, water does lubricate faults, but the area would need a substantial change in precipitation regime to increase the frequency.  The most likely timing for earthquakes induced by precipitation would be after the Indian Monsoon rains have soaked the ground and penetrated into the fracture lines of the faults.  Pressure built up during the dry season could then be released resulting in earthquakes.  Has anyone studied the timing of the fault movements relative to the timing of the onset of the Monsoon?  If not, perhaps they should do so.

Stuart.

One general connection between climate and the earth's stress field is that climate change may lead to increased erosion, i.e. mass redistribution. One idea here, that I know of, is that such mass redistribution may increase the probability of stress release in a pre-stressed domain. That would happen because the mass-/stress-unloading due to erosion decreases the overall/principle stress in the system which may have been just high enough to stabilize the system before the unloading. Mohr's circle of stress analysis would be the physical context behind this.

There has been some work of Wdowinski et al. (2010) for the Haitit 2010 earthquake: Wdowinski, S., I. Tsukanov, S. Hong, and F. Amelung (2010), Triggering of the 2010 haiti earthquake by hurricanes and possibly deforestation, in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, vol. 1, p. 08.

And, in addition, deglaciation could be a significant factor: it decreases lithostatic loading (less stabilization, simply said). And, of course, fluids in a stressed system always play a role, as they influence relative stresses.

HOWEVER: For the 26 Oct 2015 event in Hindu Kush, I STRONGLY DOUBT that these factors may have played a SIGNIFICANT role. I am not an expert for this part of the world, but a hypocenter depth of more than 200 km makes it, for my understanding, very unlikely that the event was climate-related.

Thanks for the detailed response (i) Stuart Arthur Harris (ii) Benjamin D. Gutknecht ! I'm also looking for the some diagrams and literature relevant to the above input. Any reference or advice to this?

The lithosphere is very close connected with the atmosphere. There is relationship between precipitation and earthquakes on the short-term scale. There is the relationship between solar irradiation and stress field in the upper crust. The secondary microseisms show the annual variations with the maximum during the winter (on northern hemisphere) and during the summer (on southern hemisphere) , which is connected again with the annual variations of the stress field in the crust. We can clearly recognise the 60-year period both in climate as well as in global seismicity. At that case, the maximum of seismicity coincides with the period after the maximum of solar activity and maximal increase of the global temperature, i.e. it coincides with the beginning of the cold period. I analysed the longer climate cycles and I can say that the orogeny periods coincide with the coldest climate periods. The results are published here on the page 84: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259829056_Tilts_Global_Tectonics_and_Earthquake_Prediction_comment

Data Tilts Global Tectonics and Earthquake Prediction comment

 I think there is no clear relationship. The only thing clear about climate change is that it will produce a small increase in temperature that only will be important after many years (perhaps 50 years). Although this increase might produce important changes in sea level, I don't think that every disaster might be ascribed to climate change.

    I do not believe there is an intrinsic relationship between earthquakes and climate for the following reason: Basically, earthquakes are produced by endogenic processes within the Earth’s interior involving convection currents in the asthenosphere of the upper mantle. These processes which originate at depths of a hundred to several hundred kilometers within the Earth are responsible for the movements of tectonic plates. These movements are manifested at the surface by continental drift, sea-floor spreading, mountain building (orogenesis), vulcanicity and seismic activity. Climate on the other hand is produced by the near surface exogeneic processes which are brought about by the thermodynamic interaction between the energy of the sun and the atmosphere.                                                         The magnitude of energy involved in the endogenic processes (e.g. earthquakes ) is billions of times bigger than the energy involved in the exogenic processes (e.g. climate ). Hence, any purported effect of the later upon the former is practically next to nil. The notion that precipitation will help “lubricate” faults and thus might trigger earthquakes contravenes the reality that even shallow earthquakes trigger at depths of about 5-15 km. We know that at a depth of 4 km and more the rocks become compact and impermeable by the immense lithostatic pressure and hence water cannot percolate to depths in which faults can be “lubricated” and earthquakes triggered. Similarly, superficial erosion caused by occasional heavy precipitation is much more likely to produce mudflows and landslides than to push basement blocks together with the sedimentary cover to instigate an earthquake. Finally, if the claim that such a spectacular phenomenon of “clear” temporal relationships between climate cycles and global seismicity does exist unequivocally, it would certainly have been a common knowledge far and wide, particularly in the present day of climate change awareness.          

For references, try:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/himalaya.html

Earth and Planets Space 52: 735-739 (2000).

The first deals with the collision of the plates, and the second with the rates of uplift of various parts of the Himalayan  mountain ranges.

The relationship between earthquakes and climatic changes exists, while it may be  not evident for a single case. Earthquakes result from the geodynamics.  Geodynamics result from the rotation of the inner earth's core heated up to 5000 deg and  interaction with the mantle. Due to geodynamical processes (including earthquakes) the heat from the deep earth's interior penetrates up to the earth's surface and influences the atmosphere. No doubts that the climate, which is  produced by  the thermodynamic interaction between the energy of the sun and the atmosphere,  could not be  the same if (let us imagine)  the  temperature in the earth's core became suddenly equal to zero, for example. 

It is a question of time scale.  On times scales shorter than millions of years, there is no significant relationship between climate change and the rate of occurrence, or the severity of earthquakes.  In addition, there is no significant increase in the number of earthquakes with time.  There is much useful thinking to be done concerning earthquakes, and how to reduce their impact on the most vulnerable people in the developing world.  But IMHO this is the least useful line of inquiry I can imagine.  Please, put your imagination and intelligence to better use.

It is a difficult question since earthquakes may be associated with different tectonic, physical, astronomical, climatic and other events.

An attempt to find some relationship between earthquakes and climatic changes was done in our paper (see ResearchGate DB):

 Eppelbaum, L. and Isakov, A., 2015. Implementation of the geo-correlation methodology for predictability of catastrophic weather events: long-term US tornado season and short-term hurricanes. Environmental Earth Sciences, 74, 1-13, doi: 10.1007/s12665-015-4373-z.

Best

Chinese scientist studied the relationship between earthquake and local super drought carefully based on the writing record of more than 2000 years in China. They find that local super drought will trigger huge earthquake in 1-2 years. This happened in Chinese history again and again. There were a super drought happened in Sichuan province in 2007.  An old scientist, Qingguo Geng, who study earthquake prediction in China, were sure that there will be a huge earthquake next year. He put forward this prediction and informed Chinese authority. After about one month, Wenchuan 8.0 earthquake happened in May of 2008, and about 88,000 persons were dead and missed.

Qiangguo Geng published a book titled "Relationship between drought and earthquake in China" in 1985 in Chinese. 

There are a lot of papers in Chinese about the relationship between drought and earthquake in China. 

It is very correct that  earthquakes are associated with different tectonic, physical, astronomical, climatic and other events. In total, earthquakes results from geodynamics  that is a process of Earth's living with the Sun and other  celestial bodies. The climate results from the same living,  thus, .the relationship between earthquake and climatic events (as local super drought in China) may result from  their  simultaneous response  to  external forcing.  There is an idea at present that one of the external forces may be cosmic rays, which intensity varies out of phase with solar activity. Cosmic rays, as it is suggested at present, may  trigger both the extreme wearher events and earthquakes as well. Interestingly, Wenchuan earthquake  of 2008  occurred in the year of extremely low solar activity, when the flux of cosmic rays coming into the earth's environment was extremely high.

There is NO relationship!

My apologies for not reading the entire question more carefully, Muhammad.

I stand by my statement of their being NO relationship between climate change (more likely global warming) and seismicity. Earthquakes are caused when the tangential stress acting along a fault exceeds the resistance to movement along that fault. The greater the resistance to movement, the more strain energy accumulates. If the accumulated strain is great then its release will produce a large earthquake.If only a rather small amount of energy is required to induce slip, a small earthquake will occur.

As an analogy, think of an empty cardboard box on a tabletop. It takes little of your energy to slide it, thus it slides smoothly with no jerking at all. Next load that box with about 35 kg of books (or rocks) then push it on the same table top. Initially you may not even be able to move it, but if you push harder it will move. This time, however, it will move in a jerky manner rather than smoothly, and it is that sudden, jerky movement that would be analogous to your earthquake.

One more example. Take a small, wooden toothpick and a larger, plastic ruler, say about 32 cm long. The objective will be to break each one and note which makes the louder noise when broken. It takes almost no energy to break the toothpick so when you do break it there will be a very quiet pop because all of the energy put in to breaking it, very little, will be released. Now do the same with the plastic ruler and if it is brittle (not all are) it will require more of your energy to break it then it will take to break the toothpick. This time there will be a loud crack because of the greater energy expended by you to break it, all of which will be released upon breakage.

The Hindu Kush earthquake would most likely have been induced by the continual northern movement of the Indian tectonic plate beneath the Eurasian tectonic plate.

Please, pay attention that the  present Global Warming is accompanied by the  present Global Seismic Activation (figure) .

Dear Galina, just to comment about your picture. The increasing of M=4.5 earthquakes from 1973 to present has in my opinion not to be related with the Global Warming, but rather to the exponential increase of seismic instrumentation deployed in remote regions and in a reduction of the detection threshold due to technical improvements still ongoing. At the same time, the peak ground accelerations (upper limit) in the last 20 years increased from 0.5 g to 4 g simply because the number of accelerometers operating in the near fault increased with time and not because earthquakes now are shaking the earth more furiously. From 1973 to present the NEIC catalog is complete only for M > 6.0. From 1995 to present we can suppose that NEIC is almost complete FOR M>5.5. Still today there are many areas in the world, MAINLY IN SOUTHERN EMISPHERE, where earthquakes occur and we are not able to record M=4.5 earthquakes.

Dear Alessandro, thank you very much  for comments. My picture showes that not only an amount of M=4.5 earthquakes increased from 1973, that of course may be related to  the  increase of seismic instrumentation, but it shows that the amount of released  seismic energy increased as well. The main inputs to the seismic energy produce the strong events (M=>7), which,  to my mind, could be  fixed correctly during all the time from 1973. 

It should be better to consider the cumulative moment released as many authors did. In that case you will find pictures as Fig. 6 here:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.132.6086&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Picture shows you that there is an acceleration of moment released around 1960 and after the trend is re-established. I think that for large earthquakes it's difficult to get a statistically robust trend when only 40 years are taken into account. The same can be observed for the energy released.

Alessandro,

Thanks again,

Galina

Dear Galina,

for the sake of completeness please read Jeffrey Love and Jeremy Thomas article on GRL 2013 (http://geomag.usgs.gov/downloads/publications/grl50211.pdf). They conclude the following:

We measure the statistical significance of the

difference between the earthquake-number distributions below

and above the median of the solar-terrestrial averages by w2

and Student’s t tests. Across a range of earthquake magnitude

thresholds, we find no consistent and statistically significant

distributional differences. We also introduce time lags

between the solar-terrestrial variables and the number of

earthquakes, but again no statistically significant distributional

difference is found. We cannot reject the null hypothesis of no

solar-terrestrial triggering of earthquakes.

It could be that in the next century we will find some correlation but up to now this is the best result. 

Thanks, Alessandro, for the interesting discussion.

I know this paper by J.J. Love and J.N. Thomas - it is very useful.  But the  solar-terrestrial relationships are  not  so simple. Please, look at the picture. 

Galina

What happens if you consider earthquakes in the range M>5.5 - M7 events. I do not believe too much in correlations like this where only a local area (e.g.  a part of the northern emisphere) is investigated in a short time period for very strong earthquakes. 

Dear Galina, It is interesting that not only 11-year long solar cycle (Wolf) is visible in the seismicity in the particular area, but sometimes, I found 22-year Hale cycle and 179-years long period (Jose 1965) . Each area has its own fingerprint. See, for example number of M7 EQs in California.

Further to the excellent discussion above, i would add a civil engineer's point of view: It would be interesting to consider the interaction effects of climate change and earthquakes on the resilience of our built environment. For instance, is there a change in resilience of infrastructure to severe flooding if it has been weakened by seismic activity.