Knowing ahead of time if an earthquake is set to strike would lead to better evacuation and organizational plans that could save lives. Thought to be a pipedream, a new study suggests that we might be closer than we think.
“The creation of earthquake early warning systems is not far from reach,” says Mehdi Akhoondzadeh, lead author of the study.
From the University of Tehran, Professor Akhoondzadeh analyzed chemical and atmospheric anomalies in the months before the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that devastated regions in Turkey and Syria on February 6, 2023.
Though earthquake precursors are known to exist, as reported by Alpha Galileo, to date, they remain vague, if not impossible, to define clearly. The technology and methods used do not provide a clear enough picture of a pattern researchers can apply across all earthquake-prone regions worldwide.
Is an earthquake coming? We’re not looking for the right signs
However, we might not have been approaching the problem correctly. Forget seismometers. What about satellite technology? Such as the seismo-electromagnetic satellite from China, the CSES-01, which is what Professor Akhoondzadeh used along with the European Space Agency’s Swarm satellites.
These satellites provided Akhoondzadeh data concerning abnormalities in temperature and electron density throughout the Earth’s system, including “water vapour, methane, ozone, CO, and AOD” present in the atmosphere. With this data, he was able to observe a pattern.
Interestingly enough, he found lithospheric anomalies (on the ground) 19-12 days before the earthquake. Around 10-5 days before the earthquake, he detected most of the atmospheric anomalies, with ionospheric anomalies appearing 5-1 day before it finally struck.
“Therefore, the results of this study confirm the sequence of appearance of earthquake precursors from the lower layers of the lithosphere to the upper layers of the ionosphere.” The signs first present themselves on the ground and lift further above Earth. We just might not have been looking for the right signs.
Earthquake warning systems might be on the horizon
“It is necessary to investigate and evaluate several earthquakes (statistical analysis),” Professor Akhoondzadeh admits. However, this study does seem to suggest that using a variety of remote-sensing satellites could help us study and identify earthquake precursors over two weeks in advance.
Famously, the city of Haicheng in China was evacuated weeks before a 7.3 earthquake due to abnormal animal behavior along with other signs, so even if we haven’t been able to totally identify what happens before an earthquake strikes, it seems, as this study suggests, that there are changes that occur through the Earth’s system that we can indeed tap into using satellites.
“It is also necessary to mention,” Akhoondzadeh stated, “that before the occurrence of a powerful earthquake in Turkey, the solar and geomagnetic indices showed abnormal variations, which is necessary to investigate the hypothesis of the relation between solar-geomagnetic activities and the occurrence of large earthquakes in this study area in the future studies.”
Hopefully, this study will open up future studies. It seems we should pivot our focus over to satellites to study earthquake patterns.
“The possibility of using different classical and intelligent algorithms in the analysis of time series of earthquake precursors has also provided the possibility of detecting complex and non-linear anomalies,” Akhoondzadeh concludes.
“As a result, we can hope to create earthquake warning systems with low uncertainty in the future.”
The study has been published in the Journal of Applied Geodesy.
