廣岡 伸治

© 2017 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Recent studies have reported unusual behaviors of geomagnetic diurnal variation (GDV) in the vertical component prior to the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake (Mw 9.0). To make a better understanding of this phenomenon, time-spatial analysis of GDV has been applied in this study. Geomagnetic data of long term observations at 17 stations in Japan have been analyzed using the same method in Han et al. 2015. Ratios of diurnal variation range between the target station and the reference station KAK have been computed. After removing seasonal variations revealed by wavelet transform analysis, the 15-day mean values of the ratios in the vertical component shows a clear anomaly exceeding the statistical threshold about 2 months before the mega event in both ESA and MIZ stations in the Tohoku Region. Similar results could not be found in other regions of Japan. Spatial distributions of the ratios show a good agreement between the location of the anomalies and the epicenter of Mw 9.0 earthquake. These time-spatial results are consistent with independent results obtained from other observations such as radon density, seismicity, and GPS displacements, which suggest the geomagnetic data might be useful in earthquake monitoring and disaster mitigation.

Xu et al. (2013) and Han et al. (2015) have reported unusual behaviors of geomagnetic diurnal variation (GDV) in the vertical component prior to the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake (Mw 9.0). To make a better understanding of this phenomenon, temporal-spatial analyses of GDV have been applied in this study. Geomagnetic data of long-term observations at 17 stations in Japan have been analyzed using the same method in Han et al. (2015). Ratios of diurnal variation range between the reference station KAK and the target stations have been computed. After removing seasonal variations, the 15-day backward running mean values of the ratios in the vertical component shows a clear anomaly exceeding the statistical threshold about 2 months before the mega event at both ESA and MIZ stations in the Tohoku Region. Locations of anomalies in spatial distribution show a good correlation with the epicenter of the Mw 9.0 earthquake. These spatiotemporal results are consistent with those obtained from other independent observations such as groundwater level and GPS displacements. The coupling of multiple pre-earthquake phenomena may help to understand the preparation process of a mega earthquake in the subduction zone. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

A numerical simulation has been performed to evaluate the performance of ionospheric tomography using the residual minimization training neural network (RMTNN) method. The results indicate that reconstruction with high precision is possible when the standard deviation of the noise is about 2.5% or less of the average value of the observed data (slant total electron content [STEC]). Moreover, in the daytime, when the value of STEC becomes large, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) increases and the reconstruction accuracy becomes high; at night when the SNR falls, conversely, it becomes low. The results of detectability tests show that the RMTNN method has a good performance at about F-layer height with shape and peak intensity reconstruction. In conclusion, the newly developed RMTNN ionospheric tomography is effective in reconstructing the 3D electron density distribution from realistic STEC data in the daytime, and is able to estimate images around the F-layer.

© 2016 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. The ionospheric anomalies possibly associated with large earthquakes have been reported by many researchers. In this paper. Total Electron Content (TEC) and tomography analyses have been applied to investigate the spatial and temporal distributions of ionospheric electron density prior to the 2011 Off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku earthquake (Mw9.0). Results show significant TEC enhancements and an interesting three dimensional structure prior to the main shock. As for temporal TEC changes, the TEC value increases 3-4 days before the earthquake remarkably, when the geomagnetic condition was relatively quiet. In addition, the abnormal TEC enhancement area in space was stalled above Japan during the period. Tomographic results show that three dimensional distribution of electron density decreases around 250 km altitude above the epicenter (peak is located just the east-region of the epicenter) and increases the mostly entire region between 300 and 400 km.

The ionospheric anomalies possibly associated with large earthquakes have been reported by many researchers. In this paper. Total Electron Content (TEC) and tomography analyses have been applied to investigate the spatial and temporal distributions of ionospheric electron density prior to the 2011 Off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku earthquake (Mw9.0). Results show significant TEC enhancements and an interesting three dimensional structure prior to the main shock. As for temporal TEC changes, the TEC value increases 3-4 days before the earthquake remarkably, when the geomagnetic condition was relatively quiet. In addition, the abnormal TEC enhancement area in space was stalled above Japan during the period. Tomographic results show that three dimensional distribution of electron density decreases around 250 km altitude above the epicenter (peak is located just the east-region of the epicenter) and increases the mostly entire region between 300 and 400 km.

An ionospheric anomaly prior to the 2007 Southern Sumatra earthquake (M8.5) was observed by GPS receivers around the Sumatra islands. In this paper, to investigate the three-dimensional structure of electron density in the ionosphere, a tomographic approach (Residual Minimization Training Neural Network; RMTNN) has been used. Results of the tomographic approach are consistent with those of the total electron content (TEC) approach. We found that a significant decrease of electron density takes place at altitudes of 250 to 400 km, especially at an altitude of 330 km. But the altitude at which the maximum electron density has been observed remains unchanged. The obtained structure has a region of decreased density of Integrated Electron Content (IEC) in the southwest area (at altitudes of 400 to 550 km) and in the northern area (at altitudes of 250 to 400 km). The global tendency of the decreased electron density expands to the east with higher altitudes and it is concentrated in the southern hemisphere over the epicenter. These results show that the high capability of the RMTNN method can be used for estimation of the ionospheric electron density distribution possibly associated with earthquake. (c) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 181(4): 918, 2012; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.22298

Three-dimensional ionospheric tomography is effective for investigations of the dynamics of ionospheric phenomena. However, it is an ill-posed problem in the context of sparse data, and accurate electron density reconstruction is difficult. The Residual Minimization Training Neural Network (RMTNN) tomographic approach, a multilayer neural network trained by minimizing an objective function, allows reconstruction of sparse data. In this study, we validate the reconstruction performance of RMTNN using numerical simulations based on both sufficiently sampled and sparse data. First, we use a simple plasma-bubble model representing the disturbed ionosphere and evaluate the reconstruction performance based on 40 GPS receivers in Japan. We subsequently apply our approach to a sparse data set obtained from 24 receivers in Indonesia. The reconstructed images from the disturbed and sparse data are consistent with the model data, except below 200 km altitude. To improve this performance and limit any discrepancies, we used information on the electron density in the lower ionosphere. The results suggest the restricted RMTNN-tomography-assisted approach is very promising for investigations of ionospheric electron density distributions, including studies of irregular structures in different regions. In particular, RMTNN constrained by low-Earth-orbit satellite data is effective in improving the reconstruction accuracy.

A tomographic approach is used to investigate the fine structure of electron density in the ionosphere. In the present paper, the Residual Minimization Training Neural Network (RMTNN) method is selected as the ionospheric tomography with which to investigate the detailed structure that may be associated with earthquakes. The 2007 Southern Sumatra earthquake (M = 8.5) was selected because significant decreases in the Total Electron Content (TEC) have been confirmed by GPS and global ionosphere map (GIM) analyses. The results of the RMTNN approach are consistent with those of TEC approaches. With respect to the analyzed earthquake, we observed significant decreases at heights of 250-400 km, especially at 330 km. However, the height that yields the maximum electron density does not change. In the obtained structures, the regions of decrease are located on the southwest and southeast sides of the Integrated Electron Content (IEC) (altitudes in the range of 400-550 km) and on the southern side of the IEC (altitudes in the range of 250-400 km). The global tendency is that the decreased region expands to the east with increasing altitude and concentrates in the Southern hemisphere over the epicenter. These results indicate that the RMTNN method is applicable to the estimation of ionospheric electron density.

In order to investigate the dynamics of ionospheric phenomena, perform the 3-D ionospheric tomography is effective. However, it is the ill-posed inverse problem and reconstruction is difficult because of the small number of data. The Residual Minimization Training Neural Network (RMTNN) tomographic approach proposed by Ma et al. [3] has an advantage in reconstruction with sparse data. They have demonstrated few results in quiet conditions of ionosphere in Japan. Therefore, we validate the performance of reconstruction in the case of disturbed period and quite sparse data by the simulation and/or real data in this paper. © 2011 IEEE.

In this paper, neural network based ionospheric tomography was performed to investigate the detailed structure that may be associated with earthquakes. The 2007 Southern Sumatra earthquake (M8.5) is selected because significant decreases in the Total Electron Content (TEC) have been confirmed by GPS data analysis. With respect to the analyzed earthquake, we detected significant decreases at heights of 250-400 km, especially at 300 km. The global tendency is that the decreased region expands to the east with increasing altitude and concentrated in the Southern hemisphere over the epicenter. Furthermore, obtained results are consistent with other satellite observation. © 2011 IEEE.

The ionospheric anomaly prior to the 2007 SouthernSumatra earthquake (M8.5) was observed by GPS receivers around Sumatra islands. In this paper, to investigate the three-dimensional structure of electron density in Ionosphere, a tomographic approach (Residual Minimization Training Neural Network RMTNN) has been performed. The results of the tomographic approach are consistent with those of total electron content (TEC) approaches. We found that the significant decreases take place in the heights of 250-400 km, especially at 330 km height. But the height which gives the maximum electron density is not changed. The obtained structure is that the decreased region exists in the southwest side of Integrated Electron Content (IEC) (400-550 km altitudes) and in the northern side of IEC (250-400 km altitudes). Global tendency of the decreases area is expanded to the east with an altitude and it is concentrated in the southern hemisphere of over the epicenter. These resultsshow that the high capability of RMTNN method for the estimation of the ionospheric electron density distribution possibly associated with earthquake. © 2011 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.