Feasibility of thermal anomalies detection for small earthquake (< 5.0 m)

Abstract

© SGEM2017. All rights reserved. Thermal anomaly is one of the earthquake precursor in earthquake preparatory phase. Remote sensing in thermal region has been employed recently based on the concept of stress accumulation in the active plate tectonics region, which may be transformed as temperature variation prior event. MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) has been commonly used to locate thermal anomalies before earthquake. Recently research has been focusing on moderate or large magnitude earthquake events. In Thailand, even though small earthquake (< 5M) can be affected unprepared area. This study, daily day and night time of MODIS MOD11A1 product for 15 days before and after the Phan M4.4 earthquake on 17th November 2006 were processed and analyzed to locate possibility of thermal anomalies. Average LST before and after events were used for removing background temperature in the area and comparative method was used to detect thermal anomalies. The result found maximum temperature after removed background temperature was 5.36°C which occurred 3-5 days prior the quake. Therefore, it may have concluded that small earthquake may release energy which can be detected as thermal anomaly. Nevertheless, thermal precursors should be discovered to understand mechanism of earthquake precursor further.