Frequency characteristics and far-field effect of gravity perturbation before earthquake

We used high-pass filtering and the Fourier transform to analyze tidal gravity data prior to five earthquakes from four superconducting gravity stations around the world. A stable gravitational perturbation signal is received within a few days before the earthquakes. The gravitational perturbation signal before the Wenchuan earthquake on May 12, 2008 has main frequency of 0.1–0.3 Hz, and the other four have frequency bands of 0.12-0.17 Hz and 0.06-0.085 Hz. For earthquakes in continental and oceanic plate fault zones, gravity anomalies often appear on the superconducting gravimeters away from the epicenter, whereas the stations near the epicenter record small or no anomalies. The results suggest that this kind of gravitational perturbation signals correlate with earthquake occurrence, making them potentially useful earthquake predictors. The far-field effect of the gravitational perturbation signals may reveal the interaction mechanisms of the Earth’s tectonic plates. However, owing to the uneven distribution of gravity tide stations, the results need to be further confirmed in the future.

Diagnosis of the Forcing of Inertial-gravity Waves in a Severe Convection System

The non-hydrostatic wave equation set in Cartesian coordinates is rearranged to gain insight into wave generation in a mesoscale severe convection system. The wave equation is characterized by a wave operator on the lhs, and forcing involving three terms—linear and nonlinear terms, and diabatic heating—on the rhs. The equation was applied to a case of severe convection that occurred in East China. The calculation with simulation data showed that the diabatic forcing and linear and nonlinear forcing presented large magnitude at different altitudes in the severe convection region. Further analysis revealed the diabatic forcing due to condensational latent heating had an important influence on the generation of gravity waves in the middle and lower levels. The linear forcing resulting from the Laplacian of potential-temperature linear forcing was dominant in the middle and upper levels. The nonlinear forcing was determined by the Laplacian of potential-temperature nonlinear forcing. Therefore, the forcing of gravity waves was closely associated with the thermodynamic processes in the severe convection case. The reason may be that, besides the vertical component of pressure gradient force, the vertical oscillation of atmospheric particles was dominated by the buoyancy for inertial gravity waves. The latent heating and potential-temperature linear and nonlinear forcing played an important role in the buoyancy tendency. Consequently, these thermodynamic elements influenced the evolution of inertial-gravity waves.

Geometric sigma model of the Universe

The purpose of this work is to demonstrate how an arbitrarily chosen background of the Universe can be made a solution of a simple geometric sigma model.Geometric sigma models are purely geometric theories in which spacetime coordinates are seen as scalar fields coupled to gravity.Although they look like ordinary sigma models,they have the peculiarity that their complete matter content can be gauged away.The remaining geometric theory possesses a background solution that is predefined in the process of constructing the theory.The fact that background configuration is specified in advance is another peculiarity of geometric sigma models.In this paper,I construct geometric sigma models based on different background geometries of the Universe.Whatever background geometry is chosen,the dynamics of its small perturbations is shown to have a generic classical stability.This way,any freely chosen background metric is made a stable solution of a simple model.Three particular models of the Universe are considered as examples of how this is done in practice.