A spate of earthquakes widely felt across New Zealand in recent weeks is a reminder for people to review their emergency plans but should not be read as a sign of a big one to come, according to seismologists.
Earth Sciences NZ seismologist Bill Fry said the country had recorded four or five magnitude 5 or greater quakes in the past week, when the long-term average sits at less than one a week.
On Friday, a magnitude 4.6 quake jolted Cook Strait. It was followed by "light" 5.2 and 4.6 magnitude quakes in Fiordland on Saturday, and a "strong" 5.7 earthquake that jolted East Cape on Sunday night.
On July 17, a 5.9 earthquake near Te Anau triggered a short-lived tsunami warning, and another 5.9 shake near Taumarunui was felt widely on the morning of July 25.
A string of earthquakes rattled NZ - what it does and doesn't mean - Watch on TVNZ+
"Every time we wake up in the morning, we need to be prepared for the possibility of an earthquake," Fry said.
"There's nothing necessarily in these earthquakes that say we need to prepare any differently than we previously do. But it is just a reminder to review your plans for what happens if we do experience a big one."
The earthquakes were clustered in time rather than geography, he said, with the science behind why remaining an open question.
Tremors are clustered in time rather than location and "absolutely no trends" to suggest a larger one is coming, seismologist Bill Fry says. (Source: 1News)
"There's a natural variability in the system," he said.
"There are a few different things that science tells us that might make things linked in a temporal clustering way, but those are really meaty science questions that we don't fully understand."
He was firm that the activity did not point to anything larger.
"We do know sometimes you get things like this before big earthquakes. Many, many times; most times you don't. So, we shouldn't read anything unnecessarily into this, but we should take it as a reminder always to know what we're going to do if a big one happens."
Forecasting seismic activity in the short term remained a work in progress, Fry said.
"We're very terrible at forecasting really short-term seismicity rates. There's a lot of research to be done, and it's really thick, hard research that we need."
On Wellington specifically, Fry said the capital's position at the southern edge of the subduction of the Pacific plate below the Australian plate made it particularly active.
"We should prepare all across New Zealand for what if a big earthquake happens. But there's nothing in the last week to say you need to be more vigilant than you were the week before. Both weeks require vigilance."
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