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Solar activity triggers earthquakes

Status: Leading Edge

The claim: Solar activity, such as solar-wind surges, flares or geomagnetic storms, triggers large earthquakes, so space weather can be used to forecast them.

Why this label: The USGS says that no causal link between space weather and earthquakes has ever been demonstrated, and that earthquakes do not follow the 11-year solar cycle. A USGS test across sunspots, solar-wind speed and geomagnetic activity found no statistically significant effect. One peer-reviewed 2020 study does report a strong correlation with solar-wind proton density, so the narrower correlation question is open research. The forecasting claim, however, has no independent replication or demonstrated predictive skill.

Background

Online space-weather channels often present solar events as earthquake warnings. In the scientific literature the idea appears as a statistical question: do large earthquakes cluster in time with any solar or geomagnetic variable? The USGS notes that earthquakes are driven by processes inside the Earth, so any solar influence would at most be a small trigger, not a cause.

Evidence and arguments for

  • Marchitelli et al. (2020) compared 20 years of SOHO solar-wind proton data with the ISC-GEM global earthquake catalogue. They report a correlation between proton density and M > 5.6 earthquakes one day later, which grew stronger for larger magnitude thresholds, and they proposed a reverse-piezoelectric mechanism. [1]

Evidence and arguments against

  • Love & Thomas (2013, USGS) sorted earthquake counts by annual, monthly and daily sunspot number, solar-wind speed and geomagnetic activity. Across magnitude thresholds and with time lags, they found no consistent, statistically significant difference. [2]
  • USGS: there is no demonstrated causal link between space weather and earthquakes. Flare and storm rates rise and fall over the 11-year solar cycle, and earthquake rates do not. [3]
  • USGS: decades of work have produced no convincing evidence of electromagnetic precursors to earthquakes, despite strong scientific motivation to find them. [4]

Open questions & what would change the label

Can the 2020 proton-density correlation be reproduced by independent groups with other catalogues and time periods, and does it survive corrections for the clustering of aftershocks and for testing many variables? What would change the status: independent replication plus a prospective test with real forecasting skill.

Sources

  1. Marchitelli, V. et al. (2020). On the correlation between solar activity and large earthquakes worldwide. Scientific Reports. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-67860-3 proponent
  2. Love, J. J. & Thomas, J. N. (2013). Insignificant solar-terrestrial triggering of earthquakes. Geophysical Research Letters. doi:10.1002/grl.50211 critic/test
  3. USGS FAQ: Do solar flares or magnetic storms (space weather) cause earthquakes? https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/do-solar-flares-or-magnetic-storms-space-weather-cause-earthquakes critic/test
  4. USGS FAQ: Are earthquakes associated with variations in the geomagnetic field? https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-earthquakes-associated-variations-geomagnetic-field critic/test

Interest signal: See the shortlist research for related pageview data. Sources were checked against Crossref/publisher pages on 2026-10-21. Labels describe the claim, not the people who hold it. Disclaimer.