Robust TIR satellite techniques for monitoring earthquake active regions: limits, main achievements and perspectives

摘要

In the last few years, Robust Satellite data analysis Techniques (RST) have been proposed which significantlyimproved present capabilities to investigate possible relations between TIR signal fluctuations and earthquakeoccurrence. This paper, starting from a critical survey of results achieved by applying different RST-based algorithmsto different satellite sensors to approximately ten earthquakes (two of them are discussed here for the firsttime) which occurred in three different continents, tries to offer a first assessment of main achievements, residuallimits and perspectives of such studies. Even if it is still not possible to relate (or to exclude) observed anomalousTIR transients definitely to impending earthquakes, such studies demonstrate at least: a) the strong improvementof S/N ratio achievable moving from polar to geostationary satellites; b) the further S/N improvementachievable by using TIR sensors which also offer split-window possibilities; c) the crucial role played by aspace-time persistence test to select TIR anomalies candidate to be associated to impending earthquakes; d) thepossibility of identifying and correctly discarding TIR anomalies related to clouds and to image navigation errors;e) the scarce importance of spatial resolution of observations which encourages the use of passive MW sensorswhich are less affected by atmospheric conditions.