Depth distribution of earthquakes through latitudinal belts of the Pacific region: General trends

Abstract

The geological sciences have recently demonstrated a tendency to move away from considering the Earth as an immobile system and from explaining global seismic processes only by endogenic interrelationships. Nowadays, some geologists take into consideration external forces and irregularities in the orbital parameters of the Earth in the Earth‐Sun‐Moon system when analyzing seismic processes [2]. The study of global regularities in the latitudinal distribution of earthquake foci revealed their distinct irregularity. It has been shown [3, 4, 6] that seismic activity is practically absent at polar and near-polar latitudes and rapidly increases in the middle latitudes to reach a maximum at 40 ° ‐50 ° N and 20 ° ‐30 ° S with a stable local minimum along the equator. The quantitative distribution of seismic events through different latitudes with account for hypocenter depths at four depths intervals is considered in [7], although its authors performed no quantitative analysis of their two-dimensional distribution (through depths and latitudes) and two-dimensional distribution of released energy.