It can no longer be assumed that variations in the level of deep aquifers have no impact on the seismic risk of an area. The evidence that climate has an influence on tectonic movements is increasing: water from rain, rivers, lakes, or seas seeps through any fissure it finds in the porous crust and can reach depths of up to 10-20 km and produce earthquakes. It is true that most earthquakes are generated as a consequence of plate movements, but even these massive Structures can be influenced by what happens on the surface that can slow down or increase the occurrence of earthquakes.

In addition, any element that increases or decreases the weight supported by the crust generates deformations and stresses. When this occurs above one of the many existing faults where the crust is already "prestressed", it can increase or decrease its potential for seismic slip. And there is a very heavy substance whose movements are highly dependent on climatic conditions: water! Everything is water, said the founder of the Western Philosophy , the Greek Thales of Miletus (c. 624-546 BC), 25 centuries ago, and he was right. In this "International Year of Water", and if we continue like this, we will have to go to Pamplona with a boat and without socks, we are reminded of the importance of this "vulgar combination" of Hydrogen and Oxygen that has been the core topic for the appearance of life on our planet, and that today is a scarce commodity in many countries in the process of development, when its onslaught and persistence begins to scare us.

Although water is a necessary good, it is also an unavoidable evil: tsunamis, hurricanes, typhoons, floods, etc., cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. We have to live with our indispensable friend that turns into an enemy when it wants to; to make matters worse, we are composed of up to three quarters water. However, we exercise an egocentric vision of the relevance of the liquid element, since we emphasize its importance for human beings, who after all are nothing more than an infinitesimal part of living beings, we appeared in the "last second" of the slow evolution of a planet with 4500 million years of history. Vertebrates represent only 2.7% of living beings, and "Ecce Homo", within the subclass of mammals, not even 0.01%. Suffice it to say that inside our organism there are more bacteria than human beings populating the Earth!

It turns out that David killed Goliath again, and we have a destructive potential far superior to the submicroscopic viruses that cause us so much panic: in recent centuries man has been progressively destroying his entire environment (atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, etc.) as biologists, physicists, meteorologists, doctors, the media, etc. have been denouncing for some time now. The much-used concept of global climate change due to the greenhouse effect and subsequent generalized warming no longer surprises anyone and most countries are trying to take measures to curb this phenomenon.

It is up to us geologists to remind society that humans also have a decisive influence on the geosphere, a concept that is not often publicized. Human action on the geosphere is particularly harmful, altering the hydrological cycle through: gigantic exploitation of mineral deposits, quarries that destroy entire hillsides and disrupt the subway flow of water; huge reservoirs; extractions or injections of various fluids (hydrocarbons, water, CO2, etc.); deforestation of mountains that increase erosion and erosion.); deforestation of mountains that increase water erosion and the risk of landslides; massive overexploitation of deep aquifers for agricultural or domestic uses; contamination of aquifers and massive fracturing of the subsoil through fracking to extract shale gas, etc.

In relation to the geosphere, we must point out something that may seem shocking to ordinary mortals: most rocks come from the action of water! This is an irrefutable reality, since they were initially formed on a seabed, or at the bottom of a lake or river, or are the result of erosion by runoff water. The imposing roof of the world on Everest is built of metamorphic and igneous rocks, which were originally marine or lake sediments (carbonates, sands, silts, clays, etc.), and when buried were transformed into schists or granites by pressure and temperature. Subsequently, the collisions of the plates were responsible for raising them to heights of over 8000 meters. On the other hand, the morphology of the relief is a direct consequence of the action of water: the monotonous and hilly Castilian plateau was a mountain range similar to the Himalayas 400 million years ago, and its current configuration is due to the slow and relentless erosive action of this element. Many of the spectacular morphologies that we see today in the world were sculpted by our friend and enemy H2O, for example the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

The planet is usually subdivided into two very distinct and apparently unrelated areas, except for the coastal strips: the oceans and the continents. However, the thin layer of oceanic water is supported by a thick crust of volcanic rocks and, on the other hand, the continents retain in their subsoil vast "oceans" of water in the form of gigantic confined aquifers: the African continent has an enormous ocean of water a few kilometers deep below its arid surface. In other words, this dichotomy in the subdivision of the planet into two contrasting underworlds is artificial, and water and land are intimately related.

Human-induced global warming through the massive release of industrial gases into the atmosphere is changing the Earth's weather patterns (more hurricanes, more devastating monsoons, unusually heavy rainfall and droughts, etc.). The importance of climatic variations (water) on the geosphere is now recognized: erosion of the highest mountains such as the Himalayas has increased; the kinematics of the movement of the Indian plate has changed due to the erosive effect of water; there is a recurrence of so-called "climatequakes" or earthquakes induced by climatic conditions; global warming is melting the polar ice caps and the sea level is slowly rising on a planetary scale. This spatial "transfer" of frozen water into liquid water has irrefutable consequences in terms of increased seismicity in areas such as Greenland (freed from the weight of ice) and will have a triggering effect on seismicity in coastal areas with active faults (e.g., the San Andreas fault in California) in the medium term deadline .

The idea that climate change and precipitation can influence earthquakes is a well-tested hypothesis: so-called "hydroseismicity" suggests that there are cause-effect relationships between heavy precipitation and shallow, high-magnitude earthquakes. In this regard, results from more than 30 programs of study conducted worldwide during the last quarter century on five different continents demonstrate that hydroseismicity is a viable hypothesis to explain intraplate seismicity, regardless of the prevailing tectonic regime.

These human-induced climatic variations are obvious in our country, and anyone can see that the weather has changed radically in recent years, with severe summer droughts followed by massive rainfall and disastrous floods. In fact, all historical rainfall records have been broken, particularly in Navarra, Murcia and Jaén, and curiously, these three areas have been suffering anomalous seismic crises for some time.

It is enough to "go to the hills of Ubeda" to see how the inhabitants of Torreperogil and Sabiote experience "in situ" that heavy rains cause an increase in seismicity soon after. In Lorca the evidences have already been published by different experts, today the activity picks up. In Navarra it has reached the Parliament. In Galicia, the seismic series point to the opening of a new front for water and earthquakes, with many possibilities of success given the intraplate position of this region. Finally, in Madrid, there is sufficient evidence of suspicious seismicity to be analyzing this possible logistical goal , especially since the publication of the research by scientists from the United States Geological Service (USGS) that the earthquake of the never seismic Oklahoma in 2011 of 5.7 magnitude, was caused by the incessant injection of water into the subsoil, were the contaminated leftovers of the oil industry. The equation is easy, the argument is served.