Space-based earthquakes and seaquakes early detection system

Paper number

IAC-05-B2.1.08

Author

Mr. Federico Grasso, Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy

Year

2005

Abstract

Earth and sea quakes have always been puzzling scientists all over the world: this kind of sudden telluric movement seems to be unpredictable and science is currently searching for signs which could forecasts the happening of such an event. The benefits are self-evident: even with a small anticipation of a couple of hours, hundreds of human lives could be saved. 
Recent researches pointed out that, up to some days before the happening of a seismic event, could be observed changes in the terrestrial magnetic vector field (B), just above the place where, soon later, an earthquake will occur. These particular magnetic waves are emitted with extremely low  frequency (between 1 and 1000 Hz), towards terrestrial ionosphere and once arrived there interact with it. With current techniques, it could be possible to recover the original direction of the perturbation and thus to pinpoint with some accuracy the geographical region where most likely the quake will have place. Of course equally good results could be obtained by using ground-based magnetometers but, there are some serious restrictions in this case. 
The main advantages of using a satellite instead of ground-based sensors are two: the first is the possibility of monitoring huge areas and collecting the data simultaneously by one single receiving and processing station, with obvious gain in the prediction time. The second is the possibility of forecasting seaquakes: it is in fact almost impossible to place useful amounts of sensors at great ocean depths; rather this task can easily be accomplished by a satellite orbiting around the Earth.  
Moreover, to get better results, I propose to combine the data coming from the space-based magnetometer with those collected, for the same geographical region, by another instrument oriented to Earth observation. For example, using the ASAR instrument loaded on board the ESA Envisat satellite, it will be possible to create a datacube, gathering the information on both magnetic variations and the slight height differences of the terrain; appropriate data analysis will also allow to correlate these data with time, thus increasing by far the prediction precision. 

Abstract document

IAC-05-B2.1.08.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-05-B2.1.08.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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