Study of outgoing longwave radiation anomalies associated with Haiti earthquake

P Xiong,Y X Bi,F Jing,L Z Chen,C L Kang,X H Shen,Y Chen

doi:10.5194/nhess-10-2169-2010

Abstract

Abstract. The paper presents an analysis by using the methods of Eddy field calculation mean and wavelet maxima to detect seismic anomalies within the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) data based on time and space. The distinguishing feature of the method of Eddy field calculation mean is that we can calculate "the total sum of the difference value" of "the measured value" between adjacent points, which could highlight the singularity within data. The identified singularities are further validated by wavelet maxima, which using wavelet transformations as data mining tools by computing the maxima that can be used to identify obvious anomalies within OLR data. The two methods has been applied to carry out a comparative analysis of OLR data associated with the earthquake recently occurred in Haiti on 12 January 2010. Combining with the tectonic explanation of spatial and temporal continuity of the abnormal phenomena, the analyzed results have indicated a number of singularities associated with the possible seismic anomalies of the earthquake and from the comparative experiments and analyses by using the two methods, which follow the same time and space, we conclude that the singularities observed from 19 to 24 December 2009 could be the earthquake precursor of Haiti earthquake.

Highlights

Outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) of the Earth is a major driver of the Earth system climate
Xiong et al (2009a, b) have conducted a study to detect OLR anomalous using the method of wavelet maxima, which is introduced by Cervone et al (2004, 2005) as a new data mining methodology based on wavelet transformations and statistical analysis to detect precursory signals associated with earthquakes
This paper presents an analysis on the selected OLR data associated with the Haiti earthquake and explains how the OLR singularities discovered which could be related to the earthquakes

Summary

Introduction

Outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) of the Earth is a major driver of the Earth system climate. OLR estimates have been obtained since June 1974 from the window channel measurements of the operational National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) polarorbiting satellites (Gruber and Krueger, 1984; Gruber and Winston, 1978). These estimates have been used extensively to study natural disasters, both as one component of the radiation balance of the atmosphere (Ohring and Gruber, 1982) and to infer changes before natural disasters, like earthquakes (Liu et al, 1997). The prominent OLR singularities could be found prior to the earthquakes in the wavelet maxima curves, which follow continuity both in space and time based on numerous comparative experiments and analyses of the earthquakes occurred in China (Xiong et al, 2009a, b)

Methods

Results

Conclusion