On the Tempo-Spatial Evolution of the Lower Ionospheric Perturbation for the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes from Comparisons of VLF Propagation Data Observed at Multiple Stations with Wave-Hop Theoretical Computations

摘要

There have been published many papers on VLF (very low frequency) characteristics to study seismo-ionospheric perturbations. Usually VLF records (amplitude and/or phase) are used to investigate mainly the temporal evolution of VLF propagation anomalies with special attention to one particular propagation path. The most important advantage of this paper is the simultaneous use of several propagation paths. A succession of earthquakes (EQs) happened in the Kumamoto area in Kyusyu Island; two strong foreshocks with magnitude of 6.5 and 6.4 on 14 April (UT) and the main shock with magnitude 7.3 on 15 April (UT). Because the EQ epicenters are not far from the VLF transmitter (with the call sign of JJI in Miyazaki prefecture), we can utilize simultaneously 8 observing stations of our network all over Japan. Together with the use of theoretical computations based on wave-hop theory, we try to trace both the temporal and spatial evolutions of the ionospheric perturbation associated with this succession of EQs. It is found that the ionospheric perturbation begins to appear about two weeks before the EQs, and this perturbation becomes most developed 5 - 3 days before the main shock. When the perturbation is most disturbed, the maximum change in vertical direction is depletion in the VLF effective ionospheric height of the order of 10 km, and its horizontal scale (or its radius) is about 1000 km. These spatio-temporal changes of the seismo-ionospheric perturbation will be investigated in details in the discus-sion, a comparison has made with the VLF characteristics of the 1995 Kobe with the same magnitude and of the same fault-type, and a brief discussion on the generation mechanism of seismo-ionospheric perturbation is finally made.