The Conditional Probability of Correlating East Pacific Earthquakes with NOAA Electron Bursts

Abstract

A correlation between low L-shell 30–100 keV electrons precipitating into the atmosphere and M ≥ 6 earthquakes in West Pacific was presented in past works where ionospheric events anticipated earthquakes by 1.5–3.5 h. This was a statistical result obtained from the Medium Energy Protons Electrons Detector on board the NOAA-15 satellite, which was analyzed for 16.5 years. The present analysis, utilizing the same database, translated into adiabatic coordinates during geomagnetic quiet periods, lead to another significant correlation regarding East Pacific strong earthquakes. This new correlation is still observed between high energy precipitating electrons detected by the NOAA-15 0° telescope and M ≥ 6 events of another very dangerous seismic region of the Pacific ring of fire. The particle precipitation that contributed to this correlation was characterized by electron L-shell, pitch-angle, possible disturbance altitudes, and geographical locations. This correlation occurred circa 57 h prior to the East Pacific earthquakes, according to past single cases of reports. The conditional probability corresponding to the cross-correlation peak of 0.024 per binary events reached a value of 0.011. A probability gain of 2 was calculated for earthquakes after an independent L-shell EBs detection, it is therefore applicable for future earthquake forecasting experiments. Moreover, a time-dependent probability gain approaching the correlation peak was estimated.