From the AGU: An atmospheric precursor to the recent Japan megaquake
Most scientists believe that earthquakes are inherently unpredictable, and reports of various kinds of earthquake precursor signals have been difficult to verify. However, in a new study, Heki reports a possible ionospheric precursor to the devastating 11 March 2011 magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake in Japan. Analyzing data from the Japanese GPS network, he detects an increase in the total electron content (TEC) in the ionosphere above the focal region of the earthquake beginning about 40 minutes before the quake.
The TEC enhancement reached about 8 percent above the background electron content. The increase in TEC was greatest above the earthquake epicenter and diminished with distance from the epicenter. The researcher also analyzes GPS records from previous earthquakes and finds that similar ionospheric anomalies occurred before the 2010 magnitude 8.8 Chile earthquake, possibly the 2004 Sumatra magnitude 9.2 earthquake, and possibly the 1994 magnitude 8.3 Hokkaido earthquake, but TEC enhancements were not seen before smaller earthquakes.
Although previous studies have shown that earthquakes could trigger atmospheric waves that travel upward and disturb the ionosphere, it is unclear how an ionospheric disturbance could occur before an earthquake begins. In addition, the ionosphere is highly variable, and solar storms can trigger large TEC changes, so nonearthquake causes of any TEC enhancement need to be ruled out. The researcher states that, unlike previously suggested earthquake precursors, the TEC enhancement before the Tohoku quake had obvious spatial and temporal correlation between the quake and precursor signal as well as clear magnitude dependence. Further research is needed to verify that TEC enhancements can indeed be a precursor to large earthquakes.
Source: Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2011GL047908, 2011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011GL047908
Title: Ionospheric electron enhancement preceding the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake
Key Points
- Positive TEC anomaly appears before M9 class events
- The anomaly occurs above the epicenter and lasts ~1 hour
- M9 class earthquakes can be predicted
Kosuke Heki
Department of Natural History Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
Abstract
The 2011 March 11 Tohoku-Oki earthquake (Mw9.0) caused vast damages to the country. Large events beneath dense observation networks could bring breakthroughs to seismology and geodynamics, and here I report one such finding. The Japanese dense network of Global Positioning System (GPS) detected clear precursory positive anomaly of ionospheric total electron content (TEC) around the focal region. It started ∼40 minutes before the earthquake and reached nearly ten percent of the background TEC. It lasted until atmospheric waves arrived at the ionosphere. Similar preseismic TEC anomalies, with amplitudes dependent on magnitudes, were seen in the 2010 Chile earthquake (Mw8.8), and possibly in the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman (Mw9.2) and the 1994 Hokkaido-Toho-Oki (Mw8.3) earthquakes, but not in smaller earthquakes.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This is quite interesting – and I will have to read it properly tomorrow. Initially, my thoughts are that stress induction (by tectonic movements) into the crust may create some electro/magneto type interference and this is somehow transmitted to the ionosphere……so ‘detection’ of induced stresses may indeed be possible?? Going off on a limb – I am thinking in terms of the piezoelectric effect???
The sky is falling.
=========
A related article:
Atmosphere Above Japan Heated Rapidly Before M9 Earthquake
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/26773/
Not very useful if a big sunspot like last week’s is galumphing across the solar disc. At first I was steeling myself for some connection to the C-word, I admit, but it never came. I’d not jump to the third conclusion that M9’s can be predicted.
I can’t see an obvious connection but maybe that why many animals get figity/nervious just before an earthquake ???
What is it about the arrival of atmospheric waves which destroys the effect?
===========
Wonderful news, if correct.
It is not clear from the charts that a positive anomaly is easily identified, except ex post.
Moreover, the text suggests that TEC is a very variable parameter, so that the process of monitoring what the level should be to find anomalies will be laborious at best. We might wind up with an earthquake alarm that predicts 1001 of the next 1 magnitude 8+ earthquakes, at great expense.
Is that progress?
I’m surprised that the article did not mention the fact that all the earthquakes mentioned in the abstract are *undersea* earthquakes. Could it be that the water magnifies an electric field created prior to the earthquake?
I wonder what the rate of false positives might be?
I was paying attention until Key Point #3 ■M9 class earthquakes can be predicted
Maybe it was the translation to English did not do it justice.
Maybe it is technically true because the word “successfully” was omitted.
But Point #3 as implied is way over the top and reduces the credibility of the entire paper.
Just by looking at the picture of ?cherry-picked? instances, you can make a very good case that something happens to the TEC 10 to 20 minutes AFTER a quake. That in itself is an interesting development and worth study. Of course, the blackout of the nearby electrical grid might be just as important in cause and effect. But the claim that you can Identify a quake merely from the signal in the T = -200 to -10 minute window is absurdly weak.
Yes, M9 quakes can be predicted. They are predicted by someone every day. 99.7% of the predictions are wrong. Successful predictions would be news.
I suspect there’s some electromagnetic phenomenon detectable by humans and animals that pops up about 18 hours before a quake, based on my own experience during a swarm of small quakes in 2000.
What could usefully be done with 40 minutes warning of a large earthquake?
Where would you go? How many other people would be going? Would there be traffic gridlock because of mass panic?
Note that the Sun had a massive CME about ten days before the 9 Tohoku event. Might there have been a gravitic wave associated with the CME that would elevate stress along the plate lines? These stresses would radiate the same gravitic energy perpendicular to the specific fault lines almost as if it were a flux field of it’s own. Electrons would be trapped against the sudden field as if it were a sail. This is difficult to explain as I’m visualizing it, but it really is a unique thing to explain thoroughly.
Hmmm …. false or spurious correlation I wonder? How many times has a high total electron content (TEC) occurred as measured by equipment in the ionosphere YET no quake occurs. Being active on HF ham radio where an active ionosphere means enhanced non-line-of sight radio propagation on 3 – 30 MHz, there are times when propagation conditions become good, yet, we aren’t getting any magnitude 7 quakes …
.
To Billy Liar:
Lots of things could be done in 40 minutes. How about an orderly shut down of nuclear power plants, gas lines, and airports? How about getting people off of elevators, away from glass windows, and out from other dangerous situations, like car mechanics under cars, utility workers off of poles, window washers off of high rises, and just generally people pulled over on roadways? 40 minutes is enough to get hospital workers to local care facilities, cops called and firemen notified.
TEC???
Is this akin to accumulated charge due to stress? Like piezoelectricity?
Just wondering about the underlying physics.
> … piezoelectricity?
“Even though simple laws of physics limit the usefulness of piezoelectricity
and streaming potentials as a mechanism to generate large currents in the
ground, both processes have been widely invoked to explain EM emissions and
magnetic anomalies before earthquakes. Unfortunately, neither piezoelectricity
nor streaming potentials stand up to scrutiny, unless boundary conditions are
allowed to exist, which are generally thought to be quite unrealistic.”
http://www.quakefinder.com/EarthquakeTracker/EQTdata/Sparkle%20and%20Crack%20paper_freund.pdf
Earthquakes send out neutrinos, that’s why the indication looks like occurring before the event
I wanna know about the infrared and the ionosphere and I wanna know about Melinda Romanoff’s idea. Any connection to the sun? Volcanos seem to come when sunspots go. Maybe not and maybe it’s something else. A piezoelectric effect could have any number of causes.
============
If detectable by humans and animals, measurable today using any manor of sensitive, automated EM apparatus; since we’re not seeing/getting any studies, results of EM phenomenon, either a) they aren’t observing anything or b) no one is looking at the phenomenon.
I think a) is operative here; nothing of note has been observed. Between low frequency/static measurement devices like magnetometers, up in frequency to 60 kHz WWVB receivers, and then HF comms circuit (hams, military and some SW broadcast listening) one would think SOMEONE has seen or heard something worthy of further investigation, but they haven’t; that’s my point.
.
Piezoelectrics would be the telltales of a compressed force. Field frictions suddenly, where none had before existed. What bunched the fields and made them “hard” to electrons? This is what the TEC data seem to indicate. The infrared is the same compression, expressed radially. This phenomena represents a whole new way to look at the relationship between what we now call tectonic plates and the solar gravitic well. I want to know more.
Maybe you’re thinking triboelectric effect – piezoelectric effect’s little-known (but more predominant than realized) relative?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect
The triboelectric effect (also known as triboelectric charging) is a type of contact electrification in which certain materials become electrically charged after they come into contact with another different material and are then separated …
Think: Cat fur and glass rod, or shuffling one’s shoes across the carpet on a dry winter day and reaching for a doorknob for instance …
.
It’s interesting, but forty years of research has yet to demonstrate anything but spurious and unreliable precursory signals. What would be the mechanism? Streaming potentials from a dilating ocean crust ought to be attenuated completely by the overlying water. How does piezoelectricity generate any signal when the time constant due to conduction in the crust and seawater is far shorter than time constant of the mechanical effects? My bet is that it will turn out to be a serendipitous signal…
–jim has this right. There are lots of ionospheric disturbances that presage no earthquake…
Sea water is just a gas at different density, but treats potentialities differently due to its density and soluble impurities. What ever effect that might appear in sea water would need a dense pair of rock salt goggles to even see it.
A gravitic resonant frequency along the solar gravity well, which would be unique to the Earth but equally, characteristic and unique to the Sun, could easily explain a build of tectonic stresses. Piezoelectrics , or Triboelectrics, may well be present, but they would still require a “hard” element and friction to manifest either. There may well be an energy threshold that’s broached at 8 Richter. Sure would be interesting to stick a balloon matrix in the air to sniff it out. I bet the seabed sonosensors of the NSA got some interesting data along that stretch. Pity they wont share. Ah, well, back to work.
So what other geophysical phenomena occurred prior to the quake, and in the vicinity of same.
Just the top ten list would do; like cloud cover; humidity etc ?