NHESS Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences NHESS Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 1684-9981 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/nhess-13-2513-2013 Anomalies of total column CO and O<sub>3</sub> associated with great earthquakes in recent years Cui Y. 1 2 Du J. 2 Zhang D. 1 Sun Y. 2 School of the Earth Science and Resources, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, 100083, China CEA Key Laboratory of Earthquake Prediction (Institute of Earthquake Science), China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, 100036, China 09 10 2013 13 10 2513 2519 Copyright: © 2013 Y. Cui et al. 2013 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/13/2513/2013/nhess-13-2513-2013.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/13/2513/2013/nhess-13-2513-2013.pdf

Variations of total column CO and O<sub>3</sub> in the atmosphere over the epicenter areas of 35 great earthquakes that occurred throughout the world in recent years were studied based on the hyper-spectrum data from Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS). It was found that anomalous increases of CO and/or O<sub>3</sub> concentrations occurred over the epicenter areas of 12 earthquakes among the 35 studied ones. However, increases in both CO and O<sub>3</sub> concentrations were found for 6 earthquakes. The O<sub>3</sub> anomalies appeared in the month when the earthquake occurred and lasted for a few months, whereas CO anomalies occurred irregularly. The duration of CO and O<sub>3</sub> anomalies related to the earthquakes ranged from 1 to 6 months. The anomalies of CO concentration related to the earthquake can be mainly attributed to gas emission from the lithosphere and photochemical reaction, while the anomalous increases in O<sub>3</sub> concentration can be mainly due to the transport of O<sub>3</sub>-enriched air and photochemical reaction. However, more work needs to be done in order to understand the mechanism of the CO and O<sub>3</sub> anomalies further.

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