The investigation of electromagnetic precursors to earthquakes in Armenia

Abstract

The present work provides a sufficient theoretical substantiation of the anomalous distribution for Very-Low-Frequency (VLF) radio waves which is observed for all radio routes controlled by the National Survey for Seismic Protection (NSSP) of the Republic of Armenia. This event is connected with the ionosphere excitement over the strong seismic event preparation zone under the influence of intensively oscillated VLF electromagnetic waves falling on the ionosphere from the source called an area of uniformly oriented Zones of Separated Charges (ZSC) in the strong seismic preparation zone. ZSC, formed at the interfaces of solid, liquid, and gaseous phases of rocks, acquire identical orientation under the action of increasing elastic strain forces. These strain forces may cause the effect of mutual polarisation of ZSC in the field of their high concentration. As a result, in the strong earthquake preparation zone, the most sensitive to the deformation ZSC, non-linear electromagnetic effects may be observed. One of these effects is the irreversibility of non-stationary electromagnetic processes (INP). It is shown that the INP method developed by Balassanian and Kabilsky (Balassanian, 1990) may prove to be very sensitive to the deformations of geological medium in the earthquake preparation zone.