EARTHQUAKE CLOUDS AND
SHORT TERM PREDICTION

Evacuation

- June 21, 2004 -

Many Tehran people asked me about whether or not his or her family needed to leave against a big earthquake. This question seems very easy, a simple "Yes" or "No" question, but belongs to a serious work called "evacuation" in fact. Scientists in the world have tried to reply this question with abounding funds for more than a century, but the Nature Debate in 1999 showed no result. Although, my Bam prediction, the best in history, offers a possibility, there are many impediments.

First, the Bam cloud, relying on a cold surrounding at night of a winter, revealed itself from the Bam epicenter exactly [1], while not all earthquake clouds happen at night of a cold winter. As a result, meteorological satellite does not show where earthquake vapor comes from in general. Without pinpointing out an impending epicenter, an evacuation is impossible.

Second, a short-life earthquake cloud, like the 6.7 Northridge cloud [2], exists about 30 minutes, while satellite images have a frequency of one in 1~6 hours, and sometimes nothing even for a few days. Therefore, it is necessary to narrow satellite frequency to less than one every 30 minutes. Otherwise, a large earthquake will not be predicted due to loss of a short-life earthquake cloud.

Third, the Indian earthquake cloud [3] depicted another impediment about how to distinguish a large earthquake from a group of moderate, very close earthquakes.

Fourth, many large earthquakes happened quickly after their clouds. For example, the 7.7 Iran earthquake on June 20, 1990 happened 18 hours after its cloud, and so did the 7.0 California on Sep. 1, 1994 13.25 hours [4], the 7.5 Mexico on Sep. 30, 1999 19.5 hours [5]. Thus, to claim no big one needs a frequency less than one in 30-minute at least

Fifth, I proposed 49-day as the longest delay from an earthquake cloud to its subsequence according to 100 events in 1999 [6], while 103 according to about 500 events update [7]. However, it is still a puzzle of the longest delay universally. Moreover, it is necessary, but very hard to narrow the time window into a few weeks for an evacuation.

Sixth, the last impediment is from magnitude error of earthquake data. Earthquake clouds and geoeruptions themselves do not have an independent system to show magnitude. I predict magnitude by comparing the size of an earthquake cloud or a geoeruption with those whose magnitudes are in earthquake database. Thus, errors of earthquake data twice affect a prediction: one when a magnitude is predicted, and the other when the predicted earthquake is reported. Moreover magnitude error can surpass 1.6 from different countries [8], and 0.5 even by the USGS itself [7].

All above impediments make the "Yes" or "No" question very difficulty to reply in general. The fact that many Tehran people wrote me to reply their "Yes" or "No" question in hurry depicted that they did not know the background of the question, and the above impediments. Thus, I give the explanation above, and hope Tehran people to understand my difficulty, without a fund to obtain the data I need.

My rough estimation (Note: not a prediction) is no big one with a possibility of 95%. On the other hand, I must remind you to care of sound from underground, strange scent like sulfur, sudden heat, strange spring and lightning, and so on for the 5% possibility because vapor is still releasing nearby [9], [10], and satellite may lose short-life clouds. Moreover, quick earthquakes may happen after a cloud suddenly.



References

  1. The Bam Cloud in the globe
  2. The 6.7 Northridge earthquake cloud
  3. The 6 M5 India EQ Clouds
  4. The 7.0 California EQ Cloud at 6 p.m. of Aug. 31, 1994 (LT), or 13.25 hours before the 7.0
  5. The 7.5 Mexico EQ Cloud at 21:00 of Sep. 29, 1999 or 19.5 hours before the 7.5
  6. Article: Earthquake Clouds, a reliable precursor Science & Utopya 64, 53~57 (1999)
  7. Article: Bam Earthquake Prediction & Space Technology Presented in the UN/Iran Workshop on May 9. 2004
  8. Essay Earthquake Database Problems
  9. Image 20040612 14:00
  10. Image 20040618 0:00
  11. Bam Series


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