Does the weather influence earthquakes?

In June 2024, a number of earthquakes shook the northeast corner of Metro Atlanta, including the Buford and Lake Lanier region of Gwinnett and Hall counties.

MORE: Are the North Georgia earthquakes impacted by the water level at Lake Lanier?

North Georgia experiences all kinds of weather -- including heavy rain and extreme heat.

I sat down with Dr. Zhigang Peng, Professor of Geosciences at Georgia Tech, to learn more about how weather may -- or may not -- be connected with earthquakes in North Georgia.

Q: Is there a correlation between earthquakes and weather events?

“Very good question, and the short answer is probably ‘no’, but it may be too early to say.”

“In some extreme cases, you will find that there is a potential correlation between earthquakes and weather events.”

“I can give two examples: One is, in an icy environment -- like glaciers -- obviously, when you increase temperatures, you melt ice and in this case, ice can slide downhill faster. And ice can cause or generate ground shaking, of course we call them ‘ice quake’ or ‘glacier earthquake’. So obviously those would have a strong correlation with temperature.”

“In addition to that, I am working with another colleague of mine at GT EAS -- we are instrumenting quite a bit recently at Arabian Mountain, just east of Atlanta.”

“What we are looking for here is to record what we call a ‘rock exfoliation event’. Basically, a granite rock like Stone Mountain, that’s peeling off -- but sometimes we noticed that when they are being heated up, they can generate violent shakings and there were actually seismic events that occurred last summer, so that’s why we are trying to do it there.”

“Long story short -- under special conditions, there may be some seismic events that may be correlated to weather, but in most cases, we don’t think those two are relevant to each other.”

Q: And the correlation is not because of a thunderstorm, or say, a tornado. But rather, because it’s a hot day, and the granite went from one temperature to 20 degrees hotter. That’s going to make the rock expand, and when you have expansion and compaction like that, well you’re going to get movement.

“Yes, you’re going to generate a cracking event. Of course, most of the time, those are events are subtle or small -- they are not going to produce any significant damage, so we shouldn’t be concerned too much about it.”

“But I think it’s always good to understand what’s going on and trying to find out what caused them.”

Q: It’s a micro-movement but yet it can be detected.

“Exactly.”

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