Do Earthquakes have preceding weather warnings?
No. One of the most interesting, but least well-documented, proposals put to the recent meeting of the IASPEI sub-commission on Earthquake Prediction, is the idea that anomalies in ground temperature may be connected with seismic activity. The idea that ground temperature anomalies are significant is seductive, as ground-temperature is a parameter which can cheaply and easily monitored over vast areas by use of satellites such as Russia’s Meteosat. However only two papers have been published on use of such thermal anomalies, and both deal with only one seismic event – hardly sufficient data on which to test the authors’ claims. Nevertheless, as the method – if it worked – would have so much to recommend it the data from the second paper is summarized here (the first paper was published in Russian and translation was not available). In earthquake prediction, there are no simple conclusions which can be drawn. The events on which hypotheses can be tested are often few and far between, an
