Atmospheric and ionospheric coupling phenomena related to large earthquakes

Abstract. This paper explores multi-instrument space-borne observations in order to validate physical concepts of Lithosphere-Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling (LAIC) in relation to major seismic events. In this study we apply already validated observation to identify atmospheric and ionospheric precursors associated with some of recent most destructive earthquakes: M8.6 of March 25, 2005 and M8.5 September 15, 2007 in Sumatra, and M7.9 May 12, 2008 in Wenchuan, China. New investigations are also presented concerning these three earthquakes and for the M7.3 March 2008 in the Xinjiang-Xizang border region, China (the Yutian earthquake). It concerns the ionospheric density, the Global Ionospheric Maps (GIM) of the Total Electron Content (TEC), the Thermal Infra-Red (TIR) anomalies, and the Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) data. It is shown that all these anomalies are identified as short-term precursors, which can be explained by the LAIC concept proposed by Pulinets and Ouzounov (2011).