A time-frequency analysis of the thermal radiation background anomalies caused by large earthquakes: A case study of the Wenchuan 8.0 earthquake

Abstract

Strong earthquakes have an impact on the regional thermal radiation background, which has been both observed and confirmed. This effect produces anomalies in the thermal radiation background (TRBA) and increases the difficulty of extracting a thermal radiation anomaly (TRA) that is associated with an earthquake occurring during the same time period. The extraction and identification of such anomalies has been ignored by previous studies. In this study, we investigate the time-frequency analysis (TFA) method, together with the wavelet filtering of the Daubechies method and the relative power spectrum analysis of the Fourier Welch method to extract and analyse the TRBA caused by the 2008 Wenchuan Ms 8.0 earthquake and the TRA of the 2013 Minxian-Zhangxian Ms 6.6 earthquake using data concerning the brightness temperature of a black body (TBB) from the Fengyun-2 series of geostationary meteorological satellites developed by China. The result showed that this method can effectively extract and analyse the TRBA caused by the Wenchuan earthquake and the TRA of the Minxian-Zhangxian earthquake form a complex background environment. Furthermore, we discussed the impact of the earthquake on the TRBA and segmented the process. The impact is mainly reflected by three aspects; the characteristic period of the TRBA changes, the TRBA occurs at the same time every year, which is identical to the time at which the earthquake anomaly occurred, and the impact process is in stages. We also summarized the correlation between the characteristic parameters of a TRA and the regional thermal radiation background, geography, and climatic factors.