Possible seismo-ionospheric precursor of the 12 February 2014 Yutian earthquake in China

Abstract

, a major earthquake occurred near the Yutian County, China. In this paper, the ionospheric variations around the time of this earthquake were analysed on the basis of the global positioning system vertical total electron contents (VTEC) and computerised ionospheric tomography (CIT) electron density distributions. Three ionospheric anomalies on 2, 17 and 19 February were detected with the global VTEC data from Center for Orbit Determination in Europe before and after the earthquake. Based on the analysis of the geomagnetic indices, we think the anomalies on 17 and 19 February could be related to the geomagnetic disturbances. Through further investigations on the temporal and spatial characteristics of the anomaly on 2 February, we draw the conclusion that the preearthquake ionospheric anomaly is probably the seismo-ionospheric precursor of the Yutian earthquake. In addition, the CIT results of the anomaly on 2 February were used to study the vertical distribution of this anomaly. The results showed that the ionospheric anomaly was mainly concentrated at the heights between 200 and 400 km.

Investigating short-term earthquake precursors detection through monitoring of total electron content variation in ionosphere

“…The variability of ionospheric variations makes it difficult to distinguish the anomalies caused by enhanced pre-seismic activity The number of earthquakes with precursors in relationship with the earliest time it was detected before earthquake, and size of magnitude based on previous studies (Naaman et al, 2001;Pulinets et al, 2007;Afraimovich and Astafyeva, 2008;Sharma et al, 2010;Zhao et al, 2010;Akhoondzadeh and Saradjian, 2011;Hasbi et al, 2011;Kon et al, 2011;Saradjian and Akhoondzadeh, 2011;Xu et al, 2011;Zolotov et al, 2011;Akhoondzadeh, 2012;Choi et al, 2012;Zhu et al, 2013;Lin, 2014;Tang et al, 2015;Daneshvar and Freund, 2016;Oikonomou et al, 2016;Jiang et al, 2017;Sharma et al, 2017;Tao et al, 2017;Akpan et al, 2019;Li et al, 2019;Shi et al, 2019;Yang et al, 2019;Simha et al, 2020;Tachema and Nadji, 2020;Chen et al, 2021;Mahmoudian and Ghayour, 2021;Mehdi et al, 2021;Sasmal et al, 2021;Dong et al, 2022).…”