Bam Earthquake Prediction & Space Technology
Figure 3 A Time Series of the Bam Earthquake Cloud
This series of IndoEx satellite images (@2) shows how the Bam earthquake cloud
appeared suddenly, at 2:00 on Dec. 20, 2003, expanded eastward from its point of
emergence, then disappeared at 6:00 on Dec. 21.
Fig. 4 depicts several examples of suddenly-appearing earthquake clouds over Southern
California, including a cloud that appeared over Northridge direction 9 days before the
Northridge earthquake of 1994. Fig. 5, a photo looking towards Northern California on
Aug. 3, 1997 shows a cloudless line marked 4 that appeared in the midst of clouds and
became a linear cloud 6 minutes after the photo was taken. Before the photo was taken,
four cloudle ss lines had emerged rapidly, much faster than a jet trail. Two, marked 1 and
2, had entirely become line-shaped clouds and one, marked 3, had partially become a
cloud for about 3 minutes. On Aug. 21, 1997 a pair of M4.9 earthquakes occurred in
Northern California. The width of these features and their rapid emergence strongly
support the theory that hot vapor emerges rapidly from a line-shaped region of ground
(i.e. a fault).
An earthquake cloud comes from an impending hypocenter, so its tail generally points
toward or predicts an impending epicenter. The more mass an earthquake cloud has, the
bigger the subsequent earthquake. By comparing the mass of an earthquake cloud with
those of former clouds, whose relevant magnitudes are in an earthquake catalog, the
cloud can be used to predict its magnitude. Based on statistics from about 500 events, the
longest delay from an earthquake cloud to its earthquake is 103 days, and their average is
30 days, so an earthquake cloud can predict the time. Therefore, an earthquake cloud can