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Anomalous variation in GPS TEC prior to the 11 April 2012 Sumatra earthquake

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Abstract

On 11 April 2012, a strong earthquake of magnitude Ms8.6 occurred near the west coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. In this paper, we investigated the morphological characteristics of anomalous variations in Global Positioning System Total Electron Content (GPS TEC) prior to the earthquake by the method of the statistical analysis. It was found the TEC anomaly was firstly decreased, then, it became more enhanced, finally, it decreased, the peak of anomaly enhancement arose from 13:00–17:00 LT on April 5 lasted for ∼4 hours and the anomalous ionospheric regions extended to ∼40∘ in longitude and ∼20∘ in latitude, its location did not coincide with the vertical projection of the epicenter, but lies at the north and south of the geomagnetic equator, meanwhile, corresponding ionospheric anomalies are also observed in the magneto conjugate region. Potential causes of these results are discussed,eliminating the ionospheric anomalies that may be caused by solar activities and magnetic storms, it can be concluded that the observed obvious anomalous variation in GPS TEC on April 5 were possibly related to the earthquake.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the IGS data center for providing the GIM data, the CRUST NETWOK OBSERVATION CENTER CHINA for providing the GPS observation data and the NOAA National Geophysical Data Center for providing data on the Ap, Kp and F10.7 indices (http://spidr.ngdc.noaa.gov/spidr/).The study is supported by the Earthquake special project (No: 201108004) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41174030; 41204107).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Earthquake Geodesy, Institute of Seismology, China Earthquake Administration, Wuhan, 430071, China

    Fuying Zhu, Yiyan Zhou & Yun Wu

  2. Wuhan Base of Institute of Crustal Dynamics, China Earthquake Administration, Wuhan, 430071, China

    Fuying Zhu, Yiyan Zhou & Yun Wu

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  1. Fuying Zhu
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  2. Yiyan Zhou
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Correspondence to Fuying Zhu.

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Zhu, F., Zhou, Y. & Wu, Y. Anomalous variation in GPS TEC prior to the 11 April 2012 Sumatra earthquake. Astrophys Space Sci 345, 231–237 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-013-1389-2

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