John McCloskey forecast Turkey quake in 2002

A paper published by the Derry seismologist in the leading geophysics journal Earth & Planetary Sciences Letters (E&PSL) in 2002 has taken on new relevance after its forecasts were proven tragically prescient by the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria on February 6.

This week Prof. McCloskey’s modelling featured in a report in the leading scientific journal, ‘Nature’, as the scientific world continues to seek a greater understanding of these destructive geological events.

The University of Edinburgh academic is currently back home in Derry for the St. Columb’s College Past Pupils’ Union annual dinner in the City Hotel this evening, where he will receive the prestigious Alumnus Illustrissimus award.

He told the ‘Journal’ how he was awoken in the middle of the night in Palestine when the 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated Anatolia and north western Syria.

"I was in a hotel in Nablus when that earthquake happened. It woke me up. It was 650 kilometres away and the whole building was shaking.

"Wearing my seismologist’s hat, in the middle of the night, I said to myself, ‘that isn't a local earthquake, that must be a long way away but it must be really, really big’.”

Remarkably, Prof. McCloskey’s ‘Stress accumulation and increased seismic risk in eastern Turkey’ paper published over two decades ago had predicted what was likely to happen.

The research examined the East Anatolian Fault Zone and correctly predicted a stress accumulation in the Kahramanmaraş – Malatya area might generate an earthquake greater than 7.3 magnitude on the Richter scale. That’s precisely what happened just over a month ago.

Speaking to the 'Journal’ Prof. McCloskey explained: “We know that these tectonic plates move against each other and build up stress over hundreds of years but they aren’t just sliding past each other, they stick, and then the stress builds up and then they slip.

“So you get two or three hundreds years of stress built up at a centimetre a year and then it all comes out at the one time - you get three or four or five metres of slip.

“What we were able to do was account for all of that motion, with records from satellites of the movement of the plates. We were able to see, back from the fault, how much the crust was deforming, and were able to say that the area had to be building up stress at whatever rate.”

As mentioned above the seminal research featured in an article in ‘Nature’ this week entitled, ‘What Turkey’s earthquake tells us about the science of seismic forecasting’, which remarked: “Two decades ago, John McCloskey drew a red line on a map of southeastern Turkey to pinpoint where a large earthquake would probably strike. The only question was when.”

The Derry-native is currently the chair of Tomorrow’s Cities, the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Urban Disaster Risk Hub, a major international multi-disciplinary project aimed at future-proofing cities across the globe against floods, earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes and fires.

Tonight he will receive the Alumnus Illustrissimus award at the St. Columb’s College Union’s annual dinner at which former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will be the guest speaker.

St. Columb’s old boy John McCloskey thrilled with Alumnus Illustrissimus honour