Topband: Ionization before Japan's seismic event

[k9la at frontier.com]

Brian N9ADG posted:

> Interesting article talking about how the atmosphere may
> become more ionized over areas where there is increased
> tectonic plate pressure.

There are quite a few papers in the technical literature analyzing the ionospheric signature of an earthquake (for example, I have papers on the M9.3 December 2004 Sumatra event, the M7.9 May 2008 Wenchuan event, the M7.6 January 2001 Bhuj event, and others). Trying to isolate a small earthquake signature in the ionosphere from the normal day-to-day variation of the ionosphere is a tough job, but the evidence is compelling that earthquakes do show up in the ionosphere.

Tied to this concept are other longer-term events that couple up from the lower atmosphere to the ionosphere, and they no doubt play an important role in 160m propagation. This is likely why our simple efforts to correlate 160m propagation to just solar indices and geomagnetic indices generally fall short.

Carl K9LA