T. Ueda and A. Kato (2019).
Geophysical Research Letters, 46, 3172–3179.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL081789

Abstract
A growing body of evidence suggests that seismicity is seasonally modulated in a variety of tectonic environments. Identifying cyclic variations in seismicity improves our understanding of the physics of earthquake triggering. We explored seasonal modulation of crustal seismicity in San‐in district, southwest Japan, using a new method that adopts uncertainties derived from a probability‐based declustering procedure. We determined that semiannual variation in background seismicity rate, which increases in spring and autumn, is statistically significant from 1980 to 2017. The frequency distribution of large historic and modern earthquakes shows a similar pattern to recent background seismicity, suggesting that seismicity in San‐in district has shown seasonal variations for over 150 years. These observations can be explained by increasing pore pressure within fault zones, caused by precipitation in autumn and decreasing surface mass due to snow melting in spring.