Anomalous crustal movements before great Wenchuan earthquake observed by GPS

Abstract

Studies of GPS data carried out before and after the great Wenchuan earthquake of Ms8.0 on May 12, 2008 show that anomalous crustal movements occurred before the earthquake. Data from 4 pre-earthquake observation sessions at a dense network of stations show that there were prominent broad-ranged long- and mid-term anomalies in horizontal displacements and strain and in vertical displacements. Data from the fewer-numbered reference stations of continuous GPS observations since 1999 in West and South China showed short-term preseismic anomalies in horizontal displacements. The detection of co-seismic horizontal displacements at these stations supports the existence of the pre-earthquake anomalies. Results of single-epoch solutions of data from continuous-observation stations near the epicenter also show large imminent anomalies in vertical displacements. Although the Wenchuan earthquake was not predicted, these results give a strong indication that GPS should be the main observation technique for long-term, mid-term, short-term and imminent earthquake predictions.

Keywords

• Wenchuan earthquake
• earthquake prediction
• GPS
• crustal movement
• horizontal displacement
• vertical displacement