Scientists predict massive quake in Delhi region

Magnitude is expected at 8 on the Richter

Even as Uttarakhand struggles to cope with the consequences of the devastating floods, scientists have warned about a “really big” earthquake in the western Himalayas that will surely hit the national capital region.

With a possible magnitude of 8 or above on the Richter Scale, the trembler with a high devastation potential may originate in north of Chamoli in Pithoragarh. When will it occur, however, is a million-dollar question as researchers do not have any means of predicting an earthquake.

But they said the last major earthquake in that area took place in 1803 and caused damage in places between Delhi and Lucknow. Hundred years have elapsed since then. The nearby Kangra valley in Himachal Pradesh, however, witnessed a mega quake in 1905. “The magnitude of the trembler has to be higher than 8 in Richter Scale.

It will be bigger than 1991 Uttarkashi (6.6) and 1999 Chamoli earthquake,” said Shyam Sundar Rai, a scientist at National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad who, along with colleagues from Stanford University, collected fresh data from western Himalayas to warn about the impending big quake.

Underground stress accumulated over decades needed to be released and the only way it could happen was a very big earthquake, Rai told Deccan Herald. The findings have appeared recently in Earth and Planetary Sciences Letters.

Collecting seismic data using a network of 21 instruments in Uttarakhand for three years, scientists found a 16-degree steep underground geological ramp deep inside the earth, where the quake may originate. On the surface, the area is north of Chamoli.

Previous observations indicated a relatively uniform dipping of one part of the tectonic plate under another plate, the new data imaged a thrust dipping a gentle two to four degrees northward, as has been previously inferred. But it revealed a new segment of the thrust that dips more steeply (15 degrees downward) for 20 km. Such a ramp has been postulated to be a nucleation point for massive earthquakes in the Himalaya.