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Studies of scintillations and TEC variations with GPS satellite links together with soil radon anomalies preceding Nepal earthquakes of April–May 2015

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Abstract

Ionospheric effects like scintillations and anomalous variations in total electron content (TEC) monitored with Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites of L1 frequency over Kolkata, West Bengal, India, in April–May 2015 were studied together with radon activity in soil recorded by solid-state nuclear track detector (SSNTD) during summer of 2015 in the same city, with a view to identify possible precursory signals for earthquakes that occurred in the Nepal Himalayas during April–May 2015. Weak-to-intense fluctuations even up to saturation levels in some links of GPS satellites and anomalies in TEC were observed in the pre-earthquake days, although 2015 was a medium-to-low solar activity year. Prominent near-simultaneous anomalies of all three precursors were observed prior to the two massive earthquakes of magnitude > 7 that devastated vast areas of Nepal in 2015. The occurrence of anomalies and spurious pulses has been studied in the present work, and the effectiveness of analysing together two different types of earthquake precursors for short-term prediction of high-magnitude earthquakes has been discussed. Moreover, this is the first work on the Nepal Himalayan region in which ionospheric scintillation and TEC have been studied concurrently with soil radon in Kolkata for earthquake precursor research.

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Data availability

All recorded data used in this work will be provided on request. The GPS satellite data were collected from installations of Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, Calcutta University, Kolkata, India. Information on the earthquakes mentioned in the manuscript was collected from the website of United States Geological Survey (USGS Earthquake Catalog).

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Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely acknowledge the contribution of Prof. Ashik Paul of the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta for sharing GNSS data. The authors are grateful to Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, for the financial support to Jadavpur University under DST FIST programme. The authors also acknowledge Mr Sadananda Pramanik of Jadavpur University for his help with the samples.

Funding

Funding for the solid state nuclear track detector used in the work was provided by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India, through the DST FIST programme for Jadavpur University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Asutosh College, Kolkata, West Bengal, 700026, India

    Arpita Guha Bose & Aditi Das

  2. Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, 700009, India

    Arpita Guha Bose & Aditi Das

  3. Department of Physics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, 700032, India

    Saheli Chowdhury & Argha Deb

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  1. Arpita Guha Bose
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Contributions

AGB and AD have analysed and interpreted the TEC and scintillation data, and SC and AD have recorded, analysed and interpreted the soil radon data. All authors have participated in the preparation of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Arpita Guha Bose.

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Programs written in MATLAB have been used for analysis of recorded soil radon data.

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Guha Bose, A., Das, A., Chowdhury, S. et al. Studies of scintillations and TEC variations with GPS satellite links together with soil radon anomalies preceding Nepal earthquakes of April–May 2015. Nat Hazards 112, 1137–1163 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-022-05221-1

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