The extreme values

The upper part of the figure below, displays space-time distribution the sequence of earthquakes with magnitude 4.0 or above from the circle centered at 60°S and 150°E . The distance along the belt is measured from the center of the circle in projection onto seismic belt axis. The lower part shows the seven running averages of the modified M8 algorithm in the same circle: The extreme values for these functions marked with dots on the diagram concentrate in the interval from January 1995 to January 1998 (light gray rectangle). This coincidence would have started an alarm for the next 5 years (gray rectangle). The occurrence of the 1998 Balleny earthquake (vertical line) falls into this period.