“Earthquake Clouds” Are Pseudoscience – The Shape of Clouds Has Nothing to Do with Seismic Activity!
Debunking “Earthquake Clouds”
The concept of “earthquake clouds” originated in Japan. As Japan is prone to frequent earthquakes, the public is naturally highly concerned about seismic activity. In 1956, Kiyota Tadasaburo, a politician who had served as the mayor of Nara City, observed a very unusual cloud band in the sky prior to the Fukuoka earthquake of magnitude 7. After years of observation, he put forward the “earthquake cloud” hypothesis, claiming that whenever similar clouds appeared, an earthquake would occur somewhere.
This seemingly simple prediction method quickly gained numerous followers upon its release. Not only in Japan and China, but also in other earthquake-prone countries such as the United States and Italy, there were people who supported the idea of predicting earthquakes by observing clouds.
However, after all these years, the “earthquake cloud” claim has never received solid, scientific evidence to support it.
Various online descriptions of the formation mechanisms of “earthquake clouds” – such as geothermal heat transforming into clouds, changes in the geomagnetic field, and particle luminescence – have all been analyzed from the scientific perspectives of weather dynamics, cloud physics, rock mechanics, thermodynamics, and related fields, and none of them hold up. Geophysicists have also never observed magnetic, thermal, or luminous changes when “earthquake clouds” appear. From a geological standpoint, changes in the geomagnetic field are not easily achieved, and the notion that electromagnetic fields influence cloud distribution also lacks theoretical support.
At present, the various “earthquake clouds” seen online are mainly altocumulus and stratocumulus clouds. The appearance of altocumulus indicates fine weather, while stratocumulus suggests rainfall. Meteorologists believe that those so-called clouds of various shapes are mostly related to upper-air airflow activity and are not uncommon; weather stations around the globe have also never monitored systematic surface temperature increases prior to earthquakes.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) has explicitly stated that there is no necessary connection between the appearance of clouds of a certain shape before an earthquake and the earthquake itself. The China Meteorological Administration has also stated that there is no sufficient factual evidence to prove an inherent correlation between earthquakes and weather, nor is there evidence that satellite cloud images can be used to predict earthquake occurrences.
In 2015, a team composed of American and Italian researchers took the 2012 magnitude-6 earthquake in Po Valley, Italy, as a case study to examine the relationship between earthquakes and band-shaped clouds in Italy. After rigorous statistical analysis, the result was naturally – the two did not pass the correlation test, meaning there is no correlation.
As people’s understanding of atmospheric activity and cloud formation deepens, the mainstream academic community has essentially reached a consensus that there is no scientific basis to prove that cloud conditions are related to crustal tectonic movement.
Why Has the Scientifically Unfounded “Earthquake Cloud” Persisted to This Day?
To this day, many people still believe that observing clouds can predict earthquakes, and some continue to insist on posting their own cloud-based earthquake predictions.
Since it lacks scientific evidence, why does the “earthquake cloud” persist?
Some people exploit information asymmetry to promote themselves. The earthquake-prone areas they predict based on cloud patterns often span hundreds to thousands of kilometers, which may appear accurate at first glance. However, globally, there are over 5 million earthquakes of various magnitudes each year on average, and more than 1,000 destructive earthquakes of magnitude 5 or greater occur annually worldwide – roughly two to three per day on average.
This means that anyone who casually says, “There will be a magnitude-5+ earthquake somewhere in the world today” is almost guaranteed to be right. Moreover, some even stretch the prediction timeframe to several days, weeks, or even months, making it easy to achieve a string of “successful predictions.”
The rise of self-media has further fueled the spread of the “earthquake cloud” myth. For the sake of engagement, a small number of self-media content creators exploit the public’s fear of earthquakes by continuously disseminating “earthquake cloud” theories and earthquake predictions. What they gain is traffic; what they leave the public with is panic.