Application of 3D Error Diagram in Thermal Infrared Earthquake Prediction: Qinghai–Tibet Plateau

Abstract

Earthquakes are the most dangerous natural disasters, and scholars try to predict them to protect lives and property. Recently, a long-term statistical analysis based on a “heating core” filter was applied to explore thermal anomalies related to earthquakes; however, some gaps are still present. Specifically, (1) whether there are differences in thermal anomalies generated by earthquakes of different magnitudes has not yet been discussed; and (2) thermal anomalies in high-spatial-resolution data are often distributed in spots, which is not convenient for statistics of thermal anomalies. To address these issues, in this study, we applied high-spatial-resolution thermal infrared data to explore the performance of the “heating core” for earthquake prediction at different magnitudes (i.e., 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5, and 5). The specific steps were as follows: first, the resampling and moving-window methods were applied to reduce the spatial resolution of the dataset and extract the suspected thermal anomalies; second, the “heating core” filter was used to eliminate thermal noise unrelated to the seismic activity in order to identify potential thermal anomalies; third, the time–distance–magnitude (TDM) windows were used to establish the correspondence between earthquakes and thermal anomalies; finally, the new 3D error diagram (false discovery rate, false negative rate, and space–time correlation window) and the significance test method were applied to investigate the performance under each minimum magnitude with training data, and the robustness was validated using a test dataset. The results show that the following: (1) there is no obvious difference in the thermal anomalies produced by earthquakes of different magnitudes under the conditions of a “heating core”, and (2) the best model with a “heating core” can predict earthquakes effectively within 200 km and within 20 days of thermal anomalies’ appearance. The binary prediction model with a “heating core” based on thermal infrared anomalies can provide some reference for earthquake prediction.