Frost quakes as a particular class of seismic events: Observations within the East-European platform

A New Year’s Day icebreaker: icequakes on lakes in Alberta, Canada

“…More broadly, the cryosphere has the potential to generate seismic events in any region where ice-dominated materials ranging from frozen soils to glacial ice experience thermal, phase change, gravitational, or other stresses that lead to fracture or other strain-weakening failure. For example, a particular subset of events known as frostquakes occur in regions that undergo rapid freezing (and volumetric expansion) of ground water (Barosh 2000;Nikonov 2010); this phase change causes a rapid increase in stress that is suddenly released, causing cracking and heaving deformations of the ground surface (Battaglia et al 2016). Often, these events are of a sufficiently small magnitude to go unnoticed, even by sensitive seismic networks.…”

Seismodeformations in Late Holocene estuary deposits in the central part of St. Petersburg

“…With the sug gested semiquantitative scale of plicative seismodefor mations [14] taken into consideration, the intensity of shock at the place of the found deformations can be approximately estimated at (5-6) ± 1 grades. This is the first intensity estimate of such a value for the city and cannot be ignored, since only two historical 6 grade earthquakes have been known for the region, but their epicentral distances were Δ = 130-160 km [5,15] and perceptible vibrations from them a priori did not reach the city.…”

“…In recent decades, researchers of different institu tions have found a number of sites where late and postglacial deposits (Q 3 and Q 4 ) within the limits of sections of up to 0.5-0.8 m thick are more or less deformed inside horizontally bedding strata; such sites are found in the region of St. Petersburg and in more northern areas of the Fennoscandian Shield [1][2][3][4][5][6]. These deformations, as well as a series of other failures in relief and mellow deposits in the region, are believed to be seismodeformations (i.e., traces of past earth quakes with intensity of at least 7-8 grades).…”

Passive seismic recording of cryoseisms in Adventdalen, Svalbard

“…Cryoseisms are produced by the sudden cracking of frozen material at the Earth's surface (Battaglia et al, 2016). They are typically observed in conjunction with abrupt drops in air and ground temperature below the freezing point, in the absence of an insulating snow layer and in areas where high water saturation is present in the ground (Barosh, 2000;Battaglia et al, 2016;Matsuoka et al, 2018;Nikonov, 2010). When the surface temperature drops well below 0°C the frozen permeable soil expands, increasing the stress on its surroundings, which can eventually lead to explosive pressure 40 release and tensional fracturing (Barosh, 2000;Battaglia et al, 2016).…”

“…When the surface temperature drops well below 0°C the frozen permeable soil expands, increasing the stress on its surroundings, which can eventually lead to explosive pressure 40 release and tensional fracturing (Barosh, 2000;Battaglia et al, 2016). Seismic waves from these events decay rapidly with distance from the point of rupture, but have been felt at distances of several hundred meters to several kilometres and are usually accompanied by cracking or booming noises, resembling falling trees, gunshots or underground thunder (Leung et al, 2017;Nikonov, 2010). The zero focal depth of cryoseisms means that, relative to tectonic earthquakes, a larger proportion of the energy is distributed in the form of surface waves (Barosh, 2000).…”