Definition of the Subject
Throughout most of human history, electromagnetic phenomena associated with earthquakes have been repeatedly told. A typical one isearthquake light . Until rather recently, however, most records were in the realm offolklore [31,71]. Since earthquakes are understoodas a catastrophic event to occur when slowly increasing tectonic stress in the earth's crust reaches a critical level, it may well be expectedthat the same stress may give rise to some electric, magnetic, or electromagnetic phenomena (EM phenomena hereafter) and some persistent research on themwas initiated more or less simultaneously in varied parts of the world in the 1980s in two main streams. One was monitoring of possibleemissions from focal regions in a wide range of frequency from DC to VHF,whereas the other was to monitor the anomalous transmission of man-made EM waves of varied frequencies over focal regions. Theoretical and experimental studies...
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Abbreviations
- Earthquake prediction :
-
Place of epicenter, time of occurrence, and magnitude are the three main items of earthquake prediction. Occurrence time is the most difficult to predict. Depending on the concerned time scales, prediction is usually classified as long term (∼ tens of years), intermediate term (∼ a few years), and short term (months to days) predictions. Electromagnetic signals of earthquakes are mainly concerned with the short term prediction.
- Piezo‐electric effect :
-
Piezo‐electricity is the electric polarization produced in certain crystals and ceramics by the application of mechanical stress. Among rock‐forming minerals, quartz is most strongly piezo‐electric, but its effect is much reduced because quartz crystals are usually randomly oriented. Moreover, stress‐induced piezo‐electric polarization in rocks is kept canceled by compensating charges. At rapid stress drop, bulk polarization appears as the compensating charge cannot disappear instantly and decays with a time constant \( { \tau =\varepsilon /\sigma } \), where ε is dielectric constant and σ electric conductivity.
- Electro‐kinetic effect :
-
Electro‐kinetic effect, also called streaming potential, is caused by the presence of the solid‐liquid interface. The double layer consists of ions (anions in most cases of rock-water system) that are firmly anchored to the solid phase and ions of the opposite sign (cations) in the liquid phase attracted to them near the boundary. The liquid phase is in surplus of cations so that when the liquid flows due to a pressure gradient, an electric potential gradient is formed. It is expressed as grad \( { V = - (\varepsilon \zeta / \eta \sigma) \operatorname{grad} P } \), where ε, σ and η are the dielectric constant, electric conductivity, and viscosity of the fluid, whereas ζ is a constant called zeta potential. Thus, the streaming potential is small for high conductive and viscous liquid.
- Telluric current :
-
Electric current flowing in the surface layer of the earth's crust is called telluric current. Mainly it consists of the current induced by extra‐terrestrial geomagnetic field variations (called magneto‐telluric or MT current) and the current as a part of the global circuit between ionosphere and ground. MT current carries information on the electrical structure of the earth's interior: higher (lower) frequency for shallower (deeper) structure. Telluric current can also be of man-made origin leaking from such electric sources as factories and trains. Telluric current is measured by dipoles of electrodes inserted into the ground at separate points. It has been postulated that transient anomalous telluric currents are observed before earthquakes.
- Frequency bands of electromagnetic waves :
-
Electromagnetic waves are classified by frequency bands as follows: ULF (< a few Hz), ELF (a few Hz ∼ 3 kHz), VLF (3–30 kHz), LF (30–300 kHz), MF (300–3000 kHz), HF(3–30 MHz), VHF (30–300 MHz), UHF (300–3000 MHz), SHF (3–30 GHz). Not only ULF to VHF bands, but also infrared (∼ 1013 Hz) and visible (\( { \sim\,10^{14} } \) Hz) bands are considered to be involved in earthquake‐related electromagnetic waves.
- Skin effect :
-
The intensity of electromagnetic wave decreases exponentially with distance in a conductive medium. In a simple case, the distance where the intensity becomes \( { 1/e } \), called the skin depth δ, is expressed as \( { \delta = \sqrt{2/\mu\sigma\omega} } \), where μ and σ are magnetic permeability, and electric conductivity of the medium and ω is the angular frequency of the wave.
- Ionosphere :
-
The upper atmosphere, where electrons are stripped off from oxygen and nitrogen atoms by solar radiation, is called the ionosphere. It consists of a D-layer (60–90 km), E-layer (90–130 km), F 1-layer (130–210 km), and F 2-layer (210–1000 km). Electron density is highest in the F 2-layer. The electron density of the ionospheric lower layer can be measured by ground‐based ionosonde, whereas total electron content (TEC) of the whole ionosphere is estimated by global position system (GPS). Electric currents in the ionosphere produce transient variations of geomagnetic field. The suggestion has been made that the ionosphere is affected before earthquakes .
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Uyeda, S., Kamogawa, M., Nagao, T. (2009). Earthquakes, Electromagnetic Signals of. In: Meyers, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_158
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