On the correlation between solar activity and large earthquakes worldwide

Year: 2020

Authors: Marchitelli Vito., Harabaglia P., Troise C., De Natale G.

Autors Affiliation: Univ Basilicata, Scuola Ingn, Via Ateneo Lucano 10, I-85100 Potenza, Italy; Puglia Reg Govt, Dept Mobil Publ Works Ecol Env, I-70100 Bari, Italy; Ist Nazl Geofis & Vulcanol, Via Diocleziano 328, I-80124 Naples, Italy; CNR, INO, Via Campi Flegrei 34, I-80078 Pozzuoli, Italy.

Abstract: Large earthquakes occurring worldwide have long been recognized to be non Poisson distributed, so involving some large scale correlation mechanism, which could be internal or external to the Earth. Till now, no statistically significant correlation of the global seismicity with one of the possible mechanisms has been demonstrated yet. In this paper, we analyze 20 years of proton density and velocity data, as recorded by the SOHO satellite, and the worldwide seismicity in the corresponding period, as reported by the ISC-GEM catalogue. We found clear correlation between proton density and the occurrence of large earthquakes (M > 5.6), with a time shift of one day. The significance of such correlation is very high, with probability to be wrong lower than 10(-5). The correlation increases with the magnitude threshold of the seismic catalogue. A tentative model explaining such a correlation is also proposed, in terms of the reverse piezoelectric effect induced by the applied electric field related to the proton density. This result opens new perspectives in seismological interpretations, as well as in earthquake forecast.

Journal/Review: SCIENTIFIC REPORTS

Volume: 10 (1)      Pages from: 11495  to: 11495

More Information: Data courtesy of the CELIAS/PM experiment on the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. SOHO is a joint European Space Agency, United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission. Three anonymous reviewers are acknowledged for helping to significantly improve the paper. This work has been partially supported by the project PON ARS01-00405 OT4CLIMA.
KeyWords: STRATEGIES; MECHANISM; STRESS
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-67860-3

Citations: 26
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