A GOES-W SATELLITE THERMAL INFRARED SURVEY (2006-2014) OVER SOUTH WESTERN US EARTHQUAKE PRONE AREA: PRELIMINARY RESULTS ON 24 AUGUST 2014 NAPA EARTHQUAKE (M=6)

The RST (Robust Satellite Technique) methodology has been widely applied to tens of earthquakes occurred in different continents (Europe, Asia, America and Africa), in various geo-tectonic settings (compressive, extensional and transcurrent) and with a wide range of magnitudes (from 4.0 to 7.9) trying to identify anomalous fluctuations of the Earth’s emitted TIR (Thermal InfraRed) radiation in possible relation with earthquake occurrence discriminating them from those variations due to other causes.

An extended study is presented in the AGU2014 NH008 session by Tramutoli et al. which is devoted to verify to which extent Significant (space-time persistent, non-spurious) Sequences of TIR Anomalies (SSTAs) appear within prefixed space-time windows around earthquakes of magnitude M>4 occurred on 6 years (2006-2011) over South Western US seismic area. Results of such a study (with a rate of false positive of 35%) give an idea on the possible relevance of RST based TIR surveys in the framework of an operational, multi-parametric system for time-Dependent Assessment of Seismic Hazard (t-DASH).

In this paper all the data available from the new GOES-W satellite (in orbit in between 2010 and 2014) have been analysed by the same way in the case of the earthquake occurred on 24 August 2014 (M=6) over Napa valley (California). The results presented in this paper, even if still preliminary, seem to confirm the significance of RST based TIR survey in a t-DASH perspective.

It should however mentioned, that such an approach (even if not devoted to be used for short-term Earthquake Forecast outside a multiparametric t-DASH system), when compared with whatever traditional OEF (Operational Earthquake Forecast) method (like the one abandoned ten years ago in US but recently re-proposed for Italy) seems already to gives forecast reliabilities of orders of magnitude greater.