Snow may have weakened fractures and faults underground and contributed to earthquakes in Japan Suzuki Kaku/Alamy
A years-long swarm of thousands of earthquakes in Japan was probably triggered by heavy snow and other environmental factors such as rain and rising sea levels.
“The changing climate can have some impact on the stress state of the Earth beneath our feet,” says Qing-Yu Wang at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the role human-caused climate change played in these quakes remains uncertain, she says.
The shaking began in…
