NHESS Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences NHESS Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 1684-9981 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/nhess-10-967-2010 The earthquake lights (EQL) of the 6 April 2009 Aquila earthquake, in Central Italy Fidani C. 1 Dipartimento di Fisica, Universitá di Perugia, Via A. Pascoli, Perugia, Italy 07 05 2010 10 5 967 978 Copyright: © 2010 C. Fidani 2010 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/10/967/2010/nhess-10-967-2010.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/10/967/2010/nhess-10-967-2010.pdf

A seven-month collection of testimonials about the 6 April 2009 earthquake in Aquila, Abruzzo region, Italy, was compiled into a catalogue of non-seismic phenomena. Luminous phenomena were often reported starting about nine months before the strong shock and continued until about five months after the shock. A summary and list of the characteristics of these sightings was made according to 20th century classifications and a comparison was made with the Galli outcomes. These sightings were distributed over a large area around the city of Aquila, with a major extension to the north, up to 50 km. Various earthquake lights were correlated with several landscape characteristics and the source and dynamic of the earthquake. Some preliminary considerations on the location of the sightings suggest a correlation between electrical discharges and asperities, while flames were mostly seen along the Aterno Valley.

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