California experts crack earthquake predicting and where a big one will strike next

Researchers at a public university in California say they have developed a way to identify the most likely locations of some of the world’s biggest earthquakes.It comes the same day a quake shook parts of LA‘s South Bay in the early hours of Sunday morning.People in the area said they felt the tremor, however, no major impact was reported.California's top news, sports and entertainment delivered to your inbox every day.

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Never miss a story The US Geological Survey recorded the quake at magnitude 3.2, with the epicenter located 2 miles southeast of Compton.It struck shortly after midnight at approximately 12:15 a.m.University of California, Riverside researchers say the method isn’t able to predict when an earthquake will happen or what potential consequences, such as tsunamis, could result from it.They add the approach works by determining where stress has been building along major fault lines, which can help pinpoint where a major earthquake is most likely to occur.Geophysicists Gareth Funning and Axel Periollat explained to UC Riverside News that those locations are determined using measurements of strain that has built up along fault lines over the years.The researchers focus on regions called subduction zones — areas where one tectonic plate slides beneath another.These zones tend to produce the world’s biggest earthquakes, including those measuring magnitude 8.5 or greater.One example is the powerful earthquake that struck Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in July 2025 and prompted tsunami warnings along the US West Coast.Their methodology was able to pinpoint the location where the earthquake occurred, according to a recently published study.The research also helped determine that the earthquake wasn’t as massive as one that struck the same area in 1952.Researchers reached that conclusion in part b...