Scientists say GPS satellites can provide faster alerts when large earthquakes strike

A new study has found that a Global Positioning System (GPS)-based global seismic monitoring system can provide more timely and more accurate warnings than traditional seismic networks when strong earthquakes strike. It can also reduce the frequency of false alerts.

In the new study, published this month in the Bulletin of the American Seismological Society, a team of researchers detailed new progress in developing a global earthquake warning system that measures the displacement of GPS satellite receiving stations when an earthquake strikes. It distorts the earth’s crust. The system evaluates the magnitude of the earthquake within seconds and generates alerts in less than 2 minutes from the first detection of ground motion.

According to lead author Timothy Milburn, professor of geology at Central Washington University, a GPS-based detection system can provide early and more accurate alerts than conventional seismic sensors distributed in tectonically active regions, which can be flooded with an initial wave of data when Seismic waves appear first.

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“The problem is that when earthquakes get very large, seismic networks traditionally have a very hard time understanding what happened in the first minutes after the event,” Melbourne told Space.com. “What you find even with a medium-sized earthquake is a very complex seismic effect. Seismic waves radiate into the ground, bounce back into the ground, and interact with structures. It gets really complicated to figure out where the waves are coming from versus what effect all the echoes are in the crust.”

Melbourne added that seismologists usually wait for the waves to spread far from the epicenter and escalate the earthquake from afar. But waiting is not an option with the threat of severe earthquakes and possibly devastating tsunamis that could kill thousands of people.

In 2019, for example, the US earthquake warning app ShakeAlert failed to warn Los Angeles citizens when a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck southern California on Independence Day because it incorrectly assessed the strength of the tremors. On the other hand, false alerts can lead to panic and reduce confidence in the system in the future.

“This is what happened in Japan in 2011,” Melbourne said. “Tsunami sirens sounded, all the warnings happened, but they had three or four of them in previous years. So people didn’t take it seriously.”

The GPS-based monitoring system, which measures the precise location of the receiver, does not have to deal with the entanglement of seismic waves. It measures the amount of an earthquake deforming the Earth, shifting the position of the receivers.

“If I go back to the catalogs in the past 20 years and look at a chart showing how much ground deformed versus the size of the earthquake, that would be very linear,” Melbourne said. “In Tohoku (the area closest to the epicenter of the 2011 Japan earthquake), some of the [GNSS] The stations moved more than five meters. “

The receivers send the signal in real time via the Internet, cellular or satellite networks to the central system, which evaluates the shift within seconds and informs local authorities of the magnitude of the earthquake.

Melbourne says the effectiveness of the GPS-based system (it can use data from other navigation satellite systems, or GNSS, too) in early assessments of powerful earthquakes lies in its “intensity” and limited sensitivity compared to seismic sensors.

“It’s like listening to an orchestra and just wanting to know how loud it is,” Melbourne said. “You don’t want to hear the violin or the French horns, you just want to make this measurement.”

Scientists have studied the movements of Earth’s crustal plates using GPS data since 1980. But a true global space early warning system has only become possible recently, Melbourne said, thanks to the proliferation of fixed GPS stations, which are often used for Earth. Survey and construction.

“The speed at which the global distribution of GPS receivers is increasing is staggering,” Melbourne said. “It grows with thousands of new stations annually, and all of them provide high-quality positioning data.”

In the future, the system may be able to merge data from smartphones and mobile devices. Melbourne added that although it is designed for navigation, artificial intelligence algorithms already exist that will be able to distinguish between typical patterns of earthquakes.

For now, researchers are trying to convince countries from all over the world to share data from their stations to enable alerts and help improve the science behind the technology. The research is detailed in the May 11th edition of the Bulletin of the American Seismological Society.

Follow Teresa Poltarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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