Successful Tests on Detecting Pre-Earthquake Magnetic Field Signals from Space

Abstract

Earthquake prediction is the holy grail of seismology and one of humanity’s greatest dreams. The Earth’s magnetic field appears to be one of the best possible precursors of earthquakes, although the topic is controversial. Recent advancements have made it possible to observe magnetic fields from satellites with great accuracy. We utilize magnetic measurements from Swarm satellites to explore the potential identification of anomalous magnetic signals preceding earthquakes. Focusing on 1077 major earthquakes that occurred in 2014–2023 in the Alpine–Himalayan belt, we apply an automatic algorithm to data recorded 10 days before each earthquake. This analysis reveals clear pre-earthquake anomalies in the magnetic field components. Notably, a robust correlation is established between the duration of these anomalies and the earthquake magnitude, indicating that as the earthquake magnitude increases, so does the duration of the anomaly. Here we show that this method has a great ability to make predictions (high accuracy 79%, precision 88%, F1-score and hit rate 84%), thus becoming the basis for an Operational Earthquake Prediction System (OEPS).