DeepSummary
The episode begins with a roundup segment featuring newsletter editor Christy Wilcox, discussing recent stories from the newsletter Science Advisor. Wilcox talks about the oldest ice ever found, which is 6 million years old and was discovered in Antarctica, and how it can provide insights into the Earth's climate and ice ages. She also covers how conservation efforts seem to be broadly working in protecting ecosystems and biodiversity, and how our skin microbes can potentially be engineered to repel mosquitoes.
The next segment features an interview with researcher Leah Saldich, who discusses her Science Advances paper on evaluating seismic hazard maps. Saldich and her team compared modern seismic risk map predictions with descriptions of past earthquakes and found a mismatch - reported shaking in the past tended to be stronger than what modern models would have predicted. This discrepancy is attributed to the conversion equations used to relate historical shaking intensity data to the numerical methods used in hazard modeling.
Saldich explains that while the hazard models themselves seem accurate, the conversion equations introduce a bias that leads to an overestimation of earthquake hazards. However, she notes that this bias is reassuring from a risk mitigation standpoint, as it means structures are being overbuilt rather than underbuilt. The episode concludes with Saldich discussing how her findings can lead to improvements in these conversion equations and provide more confidence in seismic hazard assessments.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The oldest ice ever found, dating back 6 million years, provides valuable insights into historical climate conditions and atmospheric CO2 levels.
- Conservation efforts to protect ecosystems and biodiversity appear to be broadly effective, based on a comprehensive analysis of various projects.
- Engineering skin microbes could potentially lead to a long-lasting, 'living' mosquito repellent.
- Modern seismic hazard maps tend to overestimate earthquake intensity compared to historical records, due to biases in the conversion equations used to relate historical data to numerical models.
- Improving these conversion equations can eliminate the bias and provide more accurate comparisons between hazard forecasts and observed shaking.
- The overestimation of earthquake hazards is reassuring from a risk mitigation standpoint, as it means structures are being overbuilt rather than underbuilt.
- Seismic hazard models themselves seem accurate, and the discrepancy is primarily due to a specific component of the evaluation process (the conversion equations).
- The findings are applicable globally, as the discrepancy between hazard maps and historical records was observed across various regions around the world.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “We find it encouraging that much of the apparent overprediction of earthquake hazards with respect to the observation results from these conversion equations. So rather than there being a systematic effect or problem in the way that we approach earthquake hazard modeling, it's just a small piece of the evaluation that is biasing the results in one direction every time.“ by Leah Saldich
- “Improvements to these conversion equations have been proposed by my colleagues and co authors on this paper, Molly Gallahue and Norman Abrahamson. Using these new unbiased conversion equations will improve the comparisons of hazard forecasts to observed shaking.“ by Leah Saldich
- “Wherever we looked around the world, from California to Italy to Nepal to Japan to France, the hazard map seemed to predict much higher shaking than the historic record shows.“ by Leah Saldich
- “It's important to note that even in a perfect world, we would not expect the forecasted maps to perfectly predict shaking as. As there is a component of randomness to earthquake occurrence.“ by Leah Saldich
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Episode Information
Science Magazine Podcast
Science Magazine
5/2/24
Bringing historical seismic reports and modern seismic risk maps into alignment, and a roundup of stories from our newsletter, ScienceAdviser
First on the show this week, a roundup of stories with our newsletter editor, Christie Wilcox. Wilcox talks with host Sarah Crespi about the oldest ice ever found, how well conservation efforts seem to be working, and repelling mosquitoes with our skin microbes.
Next on this episode, evaluating seismic hazard maps. In a Science Advances paper this week, Leah Salditch, a geoscience peril adviser at risk and reinsurance company Guy Carpenter, compared modern seismic risk map predictions with descriptions of past quakes. The analysis found a mismatch: Reported shaking in the past tended to be stronger than modern models would have predicted. She talks with Crespi about where this bias comes from and how to fix it.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Authors: Sarah Crespi; Christie Wilcox
Episode page: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.zfj31xo
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