Bam Earthquake Prediction & Space Technology


Figure 5 Northern California earthquake clouds This photo, taken by Shou from Pasadena, California toward the north on Aug. 3, 1997, shows four lines that had appeared about 10, 8, 3, and less than 1 minute respectively, before Shou took the photo. They all emerged suddenly looking like Line 4, straight, even width, and cloudless in the midst of clouds. They each took about 6 minutes to become a white, linear cloud. In the photo, Line 1 and 2 had already become clouds, and Line 3 had partially become a cloud, while Line 4 became a cloud 6 minutes after Shou took the photo. On Aug. 21, a pair of M4.9 earthquakes occurred at 38.5N, 118.5W, to the north of Pasadena, and were the only one of magnitude more than or equal to 4 from 34N to 42N within 175 days from May 7, 1997 to Oct. 28.

Geothermal Eruption

The Bam cloud was unusual since it emerged exactly from the epicenter. This was likely because its hot vapor condensed into a cloud immediately due to very cold surroundings at night during the winter. However, in many cases the vapor released at the epicenter does not immediately encounter atmospheric conditions suitable for condensation into a cloud. As a result, there is often a large distance between the first appearance of an earthquake cloud and its source. Since the cloud’s travel time and direction are not wellknown, this greatly reduces the precision, or specificity of the prediction. In the search for a solution to this problem, Shou identified another atmospheric phenomenon in images from weather satellites, which we denote geothermal eruption, or

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