Phenomenology of earthquakes

Abstract

Phenomenology is the unity of principles and methods of studying the essence of phenomena. This paper is a concise review of recent works in which the phenomenological ideas of physics are used to analyze earthquakes. An example of a phenomenological theory is thermodynamics. Maxwell's electrodynamics is also a perfect example of a phenomenological theory. The phenomenology of earthquakes has not yet reached such a level. So far, we have reached the status of prolegomena for the future phenomenology of earthquakes. The current state can be characterized as preliminary. Nevertheless, in this paper, using specific examples, it is shown that when searching for the foundations of a theory, when processing and analyzing specific manifestations of seismicity, it is useful to use phenomenological concepts of general physics. Keywords: geodynamics, Omori law, Batth law, master equation, deactivation factor, inverse problem, proper time, global seismicity, waiting time, triggers, triad of earthquakes, self-oscillations of the Earth.