Cross-Correlation Earthquake Precursors in the Hydrogeochemical and Geoacoustic Signals for the Kamchatka Peninsula

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel earthquake precursor method based on cross-correlation analysis of hydrogeochemical and geoacoustic signals, demonstrating its potential to predict seismic events days in advance.

Contribution

It presents a new statistical physics-based approach using flicker-noise spectroscopy to identify cross-correlation precursors in geophysical signals for earthquake prediction.

Findings

Cross-correlation precursors appeared 27-35 days before earthquakes.

Precursors were detected in both water salinity and geoacoustic signals.

Anomalies in signals were only observed in geoacoustic emissions for one earthquake group.

Abstract

We propose a new type of earthquake precursor based on the analysis of correlation dynamics between geophysical signals of different nature. The precursor is found using a two-parameter cross-correlation function introduced within the framework of flicker-noise spectroscopy, a general statistical physics approach to the analysis of time series. We consider an example of cross-correlation analysis for water salinity time series, an integral characteristic of the chemical composition of groundwater, and geoacoustic emissions recorded at the G-1 borehole on the Kamchatka peninsula in the time frame from 2001 to 2003, which is characterized by a sequence of three groups of significant seismic events. We found that cross-correlation precursors took place 27, 31, and 35 days ahead of the strongest earthquakes for each group of seismic events, respectively. At the same time, precursory anomalies in the signals themselves were observed only in the geoacoustic emissions for one group of earthquakes.