Abstract: The thermal anomaly before earthquake was widely studied during the last 20 years; in most cases the thermal anomaly is far away from the epicenter, so it is difficult to predict the epicenter with this anomaly. In this paper, the air temperature data was used to study the thermal anomaly before the Zhangbei earthquake of Jan. 10, 1998. The results show that an isolated area with high temperature appeared at a place close to the epicenter 13 days before this quake, at the same time the temperature was also the maximum value in the whole east China. The long axis of this area points northeast, the same as that of Shangyi-Duolun fault. The air temperature along the northwest Zhangbei-Bohai fault reached the maximum value at Zhangbei station one day before the quake, and the Ms 6.2 quake occurred at the intersection area of these two fault systems. If the center of the thermal anomaly area was predicted as the future epicenter, the error will be 80km, as a much better result than most other predictions. It shows that the meteorology data are also useful in earthquake predictions. At the same time, the meteorology data can be obtained and processed with a national uniform criterion, and are easily available to researchers. The subtraction method considers the relative temperature change, which may eliminate the influence of the temperature difference caused by different local climates. If the geophysical data measured by seismic stations are combined with the meteorology data, a better earthquake prediction would be possible.
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Received: 03 July 2009
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