Earth-Scale Precursors of the Kamchatka Earthquake Revealed via Polarization Monitoring in Undersea Mediterranean Optical Fiber Links
Authors/Creators
- 1. UNIVERSITA' DEGLI STUDI L'AQUILA
- 2. Università degli Studi dell'Aquila
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3.
Telecom Italia (Italy)
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4.
University of Padua
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5.
Infinera (United States)
- 6. Sapienza University
Description
By tracking the state of polarization in submarine optical cables carrying live traffic across the Mediterranean Sea, we unambiguously detected the signature of the recent Mw 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake in two independent optical links. Moreover, distinct precursors of the earthquake were observed in multiple cables within the same region. Their distance of roughly 9,000~km from the epicenter unequivocally indicates that the earthquake preparation was governed by Earth-scale processes, whose nature remains unknown. We conjecture that the excitation of Earth’s normal modes by solid tides may explain this global-scale behavior. These results demonstrate the potential of submarine optical fiber links as highly sensitive geophysical observatories, opening new perspectives for understanding earthquake dynamics and developing future early warning systems.
Files
Kamchatka_paper_revised_Zenodo upload.pdf
Files
(8.5 MB)
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