Dr. Ouzounov and Dr. De Santis‘ research on the interactions between Earth’s lithosphere, atmosphere, and ionosphere has uncovered new insights into how geospheres respond to major earthquakes and other natural disasters
The reporting of pre-earthquake abnormal phenomena has a long history. Fogs, clouds, and animal behavior have been documented since the time of Aristotle in Ancient Greece, Pliny in Ancient Rome, and various scholars in ancient China. Unsurprisingly, preparing for large earthquakes in the Earth’s crust produces precursory signals throughout the Earth’s geosphere.
Observations of Earth and geospace from sensors in space and on the ground provide new opportunities to investigate the Earth’s crust activities on land and water before earthquakes and monitor a wide range of related physical phenomena. By examining potential lithosphere-atmosphere coupling, we can enhance our understanding of the events leading up to earthquakes on a global scale.
Multidisciplinary observation and international collaborative work
They also found that no single method for precursor monitoring reliably provides short-term forecasting on a regional or global scale. This is likely due to the diversity of geological regions where seismic activity occurs and the complexity of earthquake processes. They determined that multidisciplinary observation is a possible solution.
Their international collaborative work found that reliable detection of pre-earthquake signals associated with central seismicity can only be achieved by integrating space—and ground-based observations, as detecting pre-earthquake phenomena requires cross-border cooperation.
However, a significant challenge in using pre-earthquakes for earthquake forecasting/prediction remains: gathering data from a regional or global monitoring station network to a central location and analyzing it to determine its significance. We believe the new technology led by AI will help resolve the open data problems very soon.
