Land – Atmosphere – Meteorological coupling associated with the 2015 Gorkha (M 7.8) and Dolakha (M 7.3) Nepal earthquakes

Abstract

Multiple parameters (brightness temperature, soil moisture, surface latent heat flux, surface air temperature and carbon monoxide) before and after the 2015 Nepal M7.8 Gorkha main earthquake and M7.3 Dolakha aftershock were analysed using satellite observation data. The thermal anomalies from optical and microwave data appear about two months prior to the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. Some of the parameters show anomalous changes at different altitudes about 20 days prior to the main earthquake event and 10 days prior to the strong aftershock. Our results show that pre-earthquake anomalous signals propagate from the in situ to the top of atmosphere, and the anomalies in the atmosphere often observed prior to an impending earthquake. The changes on the land surface and corresponding changes in meteorological and atmospheric parameters show existence of strong coupling during the seismogenic period, although the transfer mechanism of seismic/electromagnetic is still has to be investigated and understood.

Keywords:

• Thermal anomalies
• atmospheric disturbance
• satellite data
• Nepal earthquake

Acknowledgements

The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments/suggestions that have helped us to improve earlier versions of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank NASA for providing DMSP SSMIS brightness temperature data, soil moisture and air temperature data freely. We also acknowledge the National Center for Atmospheric Research providing CO data. SLHF data from NCEP Reanalysis project provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD. The present study was supported through the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 41604062) and the Basic Research Project of Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, CEA (Grant no. 2017IES0403). One of the authors (Feng Jing) is grateful to the State Scholarship Fund of China Scholarship Council (CSC) (File NO. 201704190037) to spend a year on the Chapman University campus to work with Ramesh Singh.