Statistical analysis of tidal effect on non-volcanic earthquake swarm activity in Wakayama Prefecture, southwest Japan

<p>Earthquakes occur when the fault stress accumulates to the critical level. External forces such as tidal forces may contributes to the triggering of earthquakes reaching the critical state. For example, in the case of 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, it is reported that there is a correlation between tidal forces and the earthquakes prior to the mainshock. Earthquakes with smaller magnitude are also affected by tidal forces and expected to show correlation with tidal forces.</p><p>Tidal triggering of non-volcanic seismic swarm has not been well documented. So, we choose the Wakayama Prefecture as a targeting region. The cause of the earthquakes occurring in the region is considered to be the presence of the water below the seismogenic depth. The swarm activity continues from 1980s. We analyzed the shallow earthquakes in the northern part of Wakayama Prefecture from 1998 to 2016. We used statistical method called Schuster test to analyze correlation between earthquakes and tidal stress.</p><p>The result of the analysis shows that the earthquakes have a correlation with tidal forces which have the periodicity near the half of the lunar day and the amplitude of the seismicity-rate variation is about 16% of the average earthquake frequency. Correlation between the earthquakes and tidal forces is stronger at the periods when larger number of earthquakes occur. From tidal stress calculation, it is found that both solid tide and oceanic tide are important at this region. This study confirms that most of the earthquakes larger than M<sub>w</sub> 4 in the region occur in the rising period of tidal normal stress or just after the maximum of tidal normal stress. Therefore, tidal observation gives information about the criticality of rocks and temporal heterogeneity of the earthquake occurrence.</p>

Variation of some planetary seismic hazard indices on the occasion of Lefkada, Greece, earthquake of 17 November, 2015

In this paper we investigate the variation of the tidal triggering effect efficiency, by means of the tidal seismicity compliance parameter p, and the lower Ionosphere variations, by means of the variation of the High-Frequency limit, fo, of the ionospheric turbulence content with the time and space proximity to the site of the earthquake occurrence as well as by the intensity variations of VLF signals transmitted over the seismic area. It is shown that the “Earth tides-seismicity compliance parameter” p may be used as a medium time earthquake warning while the frequency content of the ionospheric turbulence over the earthquake epicenter, deduced directly from GPS network TEC observations or indirectly through the VLF transmission network, may be used for the short time earthquake forecasting, deserving the special attention of the authorities, the scientists and the society.

Tidal Triggering of the Harmonic Noise in Ocean-Bottom Seismometers

We observed a harmonic noise (HN) in DEutscher Geräte-Pool für Amphibische Seismologie ocean-bottom seismometers (OBSs) data recorded from the Andaman–Nicobar region. The HN is characterized by sharp spectral peaks with a fundamental frequency and several overtones occurring at integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. We used an automated algorithm to quantify the occurrence of HN for the entire four-month deployment period (1 January 2014 to 30 April 2014). The algorithm detected more than 23 days of HN for some OBS stations. The spectral analysis of the hourly count of HN shows distinct lunar and solar tidal periodicities at 4.14, 6.1, 6.22, 12, and 12.4 hr as well as 13.66 days. The observed periodicities provide evidence of tidal triggering of HN. The HN is generated by the strumming of head buoys due to seafloor currents initiated by oceanic tides in the Andaman–Nicobar region.