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SuperMoon Vs. SuperWeather, Earthquakes, and More

Mar 11, 2011; 2:05 PM ET

Did the "Supermoon" cause today's Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, or [insert recent natural disaster here]? This is something that we discussed with our readers on our Astronomy Blog last week and again today. The short answer is: Probably not. But just for fun, I charted the Top 50 Deadliest Natural Disasters Since 1900, along with "Super moon" dates that I obtained from our Astronomy Blogger Mark Paquette (click to see full-size chart):

What this chart shows is that out of 13 supermoons, 54% had major natural disasters in the same year and 46% didn't, which indicates there is almost no correlation (and therefore no causation). If supermoons did cause chaos, their number should be much higher. Or, let's say that they did cause about half of the disasters. Knowing that doesn't help us predict future problems. And we gave a lot of leniency to the supermoons - a year instead of a few days, which would be most realistic.

Yes, the supermoons are clustered, but that's probably just astronomical math. Yes, the disasters are also clustered, but we already know that periods of climatic hardship come and go. Yes, my chart is probably not accurate enough to even determine anything, because I didn't have months-of-occurrence for some of the disasters (I basically worked from the WikiPedia list of deadliest disasters, with a couple of exceptions). And what constitues a "big" disaster? As you lower that threshold, more and more icons pop up until most years have at least one disaster - so yes, the supermoons were the same years as disasters, but so were all the non-supermoons, which outnumber them.

The most damning scientific evidence against this theory, in my opinion, comes from Discover Magazine, whose blog states: "There are actually 12 - 13 perigee every single year, so saying there was wild weather in a year when the Moon happened to be at perigee when it was full is meaningless. Unless the wild weather happened on the actual date of the "supermoon" then it must be coincidence, because on other dates the Moon was farther from the Earth!" I'll buy that. A similar article from PopSci all but seals the coffin on this myth, in my opinion.

The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of AccuWeather, Inc. or AccuWeather.com

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