Brief Communication: An exclusive example of surface latent heat flux variation before Russia M6.1 earthquake

Recently surface latent heat flux (SLHF) data is widely used to study the anomalies before earthquakes. Most researches use the daily SLHF data, here we use both daily data and high temporal resolution (four times one day) SLHF data, and compare the SLHF change with satellite image at the first time. We check the data from 1 September to 30 October 2011 and the result shows that there is really a very high SLHF anomaly (bigger than 2 σ) just 5 days before the M6.1 Russia earthquake which occurred on 14 October 2011. It should be considered as a preseismic precursor if judged with previously published methods. But our comparison between SLHF change and satellite image shows that the SLHF anomaly is just caused by a thick cloud. This result tells us that scientists must know the data's meaning before they use it, if not, they may get a wrong conclusion. Based on this example, we suggest that previously published SLHF anomaly before earthquake should be reanalyzed by our method to exclude the false anomaly.