Seismic Magnitude Variance Consensus Detection Framework: A Six-Criterion Approach for Identifying Critical Earthquake Zones from Catalog Data Alone

We present a six-criterion consensus framework for identifying seismically critical earthquake zones using only standard seismic catalog data. The framework combines three newly defined magnitude variance signals—compression (C), quiescence (Q), and skewness anomaly (S)—with three well-established seismological parameters: the Gutenberg–Richter b-value, the 90-day event count n₉₀, and the coefficient of variation C_v of inter-event times. At each assessment date, grid cells where the seismicity rate has dropped to less than 10% of its historical baseline (Q > 0.9) are retained and ranked by six independent scoring functions. A zone is declared critical if at least three of six scoring functions independently place it among their top-ranked candidates. Applied to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) unified catalog (178,577 events, M ≥ 3.0, 2000–2023), the method identifies approximately 28 zones (~12% of the 1° grid) that capture 81% of M ≥ 5.5 mainshocks (6.6× enrichment over random), 71% of M ≥ 6.0 (5.8×), and 100% of M ≥ 7.0 in prospective yearly assessments from 2020 to 2023. Cross-validation on the Turkish AFAD catalog (53,340 events, 2000–2026) detects 100% of onshore M ≥ 6.0 events, including the 2023 Kahramanmaraş M7.7. The characteristic pre-earthquake compression pattern—C peaking ~90 days before rupture (Mann–Whitney p = 0.0005) then collapsing to zero—is identified in 89% of M ≥ 6.5 events, including the 2011 Tohoku M9.0. All M ≥ 6.0 misses are located more than 200 km offshore. Prospective zone lists for Japan (28 zones, assessed December 31, 2023) and Turkey (28 zones, assessed May 2026) are provided as falsifiable forecasts for submission to the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP).