Electric field and ion density anomalies in the mid latitude ionosphere: Possible connection with earthquakes?

Ionospheric quasi-static electric field anomalies during seismic activity in August–September 1981

“…The obtained results strengthen our previous studies and conclusions for middle latitudes (Gousheva et al, 2008a). Often the intense disturbances in electric field components are especially observed at high latitudes under complicated conditions and these disturbances are marked usually in the open field lines that provoke rare penetration in geomagnetic mid-latitudes.…”

“…Further development of this model includes a new method for computation of the electric field in the atmosphere and the ionosphere over active faults for arbitrary spatial distribution of external current in oblique magnetic field (Sorokin et al, 2005(Sorokin et al, , 2006. In our previous papers (Gousheva et al, 2005a, b;2006a, b, 2007, 2008a on the basis of INTERCOSMOS-BULGARIA-1300 satellite data we found arguments for seismically-induced increases in the vertical components of the quasi-static electric field up to 2-10-15 mV/m in the near equatorial, low, middle and high latitude ionosphere. In this paper we present supplementary data about quasi-static electric field anomalies according INTERCOSMOS-BULGARIA-1300 satellite information over the Southern Atlantic Ocean, Tonga-New Hebrides region, Northern Islands of New Zealand, Indonesian region, Eastern Canada, Labrador Sea, Caribbean region, Central America, Western coast of South America, South-West Pacific Ocean, Kuril Islands, Aleutian Islands, Southern Pacific Ocean, Southern Iran during seismic events in AugustSeptember 1981.…”

Giant disturbance in the ionospheric F2 region prior to the <i>M</i>8.0 Wenchuan earthquake on 12 May 2008

“…The seismo-genic-quasistatic field are generated due to the emission of radioactive particles (radon) and other charged aerosols particles into the atmosphere before the earthquake within the area of earthquake preparation zone. Kim et al (1994) and Pulinets et al (2000) showed that this anomalous electric field can penetrate into the lower ionosphere, which is confirmed by INTERCOSMOS-BULGAR-1300 satellite (Gousheva et al, 2008), and then can be transmitted along the geomagnetic field to the F2 region ionosphere and modify its dynamic and electron density distribution through the effect of E × B drift prior to the earthquake onset. However, the efficiency of electric field penetrated into the ionosphere is very low, e.g.…”

Electron and ion density variations before strong earthquakes (<i>M</i>>6.0) using DEMETER and GPS data

“…The ionospheric effect of a geomagnetic storm has a global impact being observed all over the world while, the seismogenic effect is observed only by stations with distance less than 2000 km from the potential epicenter (Pulinets et al, 2003). It should be noted that an ionospheric storm usually lasts 8-48 h while the seismoionospheric disturbances have duration of 3-4 h, a few days before the earthquake (Pulinets et al, 2003;Pulinets and Boyarchuk, 2004;Gousheva et al, 2008).…”