As San Francisco commemorates the 25th anniversary of its last serious quake this week, a new report has warned that the city could once again be sitting on top of a ticking seismic time bomb.

Scientists tracking the movements of four highly stressed seismic faults that form part of the Bay Area’s densely populated San Andreas system have discovered worrying surface mobility which suggests that they could burst forth in a major quake at any time.
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The past week has seen a significant level of seismic unrest across the globe.

In Iceland, the volcano Bárðarbunga hit the headlines worldwide but so far only a minor eruption of lava has taken place; however earthquake activity around the site continues.
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Changes in coastal ocean temperatures have been much more extreme over the past 10 years than expected. This could especially affect California, which is a major breadbasket for the rest of the United States.

Researchers have also found that temperature determines where key soil microbes can thrive– microbes that are critical to forming topsoil crusts in arid lands. Scientists predict that in as little as 50 years, global warming may push some of these microbes out of their present stronghold in US deserts, with unknown consequences to soil fertility and erosion.
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