Faulty transmissions of data caused the false earthquake alert sent to communities across Northern California Thursday, said a seismic expert with the early warning project.
The issue was what Angie Lux, an earthquake early warning scientist at Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, called “gappy data”: erratic bursts of data sent by sensors scattered across the Nevada landscape that confused seismologists’ algorithms.
The algorithms processed the information as seismic activity coming from the areas where the sensors were located, Lux said. The data caused “ghost triggers” that set off the early morning alert across a wide swath of California through the MyShake and ShakeAlert apps, which carries earthquake early warnings, and the Wireless Emergency Alert system that buzzes cellphones…