Citation

Manshour P, Ghasemi F, Matsumoto T, Gomez J, Sahimi M, Peinke J, Pacheco AF, Tabar MR. Phys. Rev. E Stat. Nonlin. Soft Matter Phys. 2010; 82(3 Pt 2): 036105.

Affiliation

Department of Physics, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran 11155-9161, Iran.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, American Physical Society, Publisher American Institute of Physics)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

21230137

Abstract

High-quality measurements of seismic activities around the world provide a wealth of data and information that are relevant to understanding of when earthquakes may occur. If viewed as complex stochastic time series, such data may be analyzed by methods that provide deeper insights into their nature, hence leading to better understanding of the data and their possible implications for earthquakes. In this paper, we provide further evidence for our recent proposal [P. Mansour, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 014101 (2009)10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.014101] for the existence of a transition in the shape of the probability density function (PDF) of the successive detrended increments of the stochastic fluctuations of Earth's vertical velocity V_{z} , collected by broadband stations before moderate and large earthquakes. To demonstrate the transition, we carried out extensive analysis of the data for V_{z} for 12 earthquakes in several regions around the world, including the recent catastrophic one in Haiti. The analysis supports the hypothesis that before and near the time of an earthquake, the shape of the PDF undergoes significant and discernible changes, which can be characterized quantitatively. The typical time over which the PDF undergoes the transition is about 5-10 h prior to a moderate or large earthquake.

Language: en