An outstanding achievement of the Russian Academy of Sciences: The successful forecast of the earthquake of March 11, 2011, in Japan

The seismic catastrophe in Japan was forecasted far ahead of time by scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences. The most reliable forecast was made by A.A. Lyubushin, a leading researcher at the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth. Over the 2008–2010 period, at a number of the most important international conferences, including that of the Seismological Society of Japan, Lyubushin warned that an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.5–9.0 could occur in Japan; it was published in English in leading scientific journals all over the world. On April 26, 2010, Lyubushin officially informed the Russian Advisory Council on Earthquake Prediction and Seismic Hazard Assessment of his forecast. One distinctive feature of this forecast is that it is based on large bodies of data on microseismic oscillations for the territory of Japan, which were mathematically treated using present-day methods. This forecast has a reliable physical justification and a visual interpretation. Brief information on the results of other Russian studies on the precursors of the main shock and aftershocks of the earthquake of March 11, 2011, in Japan is given.