Accepted Manuscript

Spatiotemporal characteristics of the geomagnetic diurnal variation anomalies

prior to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake (Mw9.0) and the possible coupling of
multiple pre-earthquake phenomena

Peng Han, Katsumi Hattori, Qinghua Huang, Shinji Hirooka, Chie Yoshino

PII: S1367-9120(16)30215-2
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jseaes.2016.07.011
Reference: JAES 2756

To appear in: Journal of Asian Earth Sciences

Received Date: 16 February 2016

Revised Date: 10 June 2016
Accepted Date: 11 July 2016

Please cite this article as: Han, P., Hattori, K., Huang, Q., Hirooka, S., Yoshino, C., Spatiotemporal characteristics
of the geomagnetic diurnal variation anomalies prior to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake (Mw9.0) and the possible
coupling of multiple pre-earthquake phenomena, Journal of Asian Earth Sciences (2016), doi: http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.jseaes.2016.07.011

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Spatiotemporal characteristics of the geomagnetic diurnal variation anomalies prior

to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake (Mw9.0) and the possible coupling of multiple pre-

earthquake phenomena

Peng Han1,2, Katsumi Hattori1, Qinghua Huang3,

Shinji Hirooka1, and Chie Yoshino1

1. Graduate School of Science, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

2. The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo, Japan

3. Department of Geophysics, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University,

Beijing, China

Corresponding author: Katsumi Hattori

Address: Graduate School of Science, Chiba University,

1-33, Yayoi, Inage, Chiba 263-8522, Japan

Tel: +81-43-290-2801

Fax: +81-43-290-2859

E-mail: hattori@earth.s.chiba-u.ac.jp

1
Abstract

Xu et al., 2013 and Han et al., 2015 have reported unusual behaviors of geomagnetic

diurnal variation (GDV) in the vertical component prior to the 2011 off the Pacific coast

of Tohoku earthquake (Mw 9.0). To make a better understanding of this phenomenon,

temporal-spatial analyses of GDV have been applied in this study. Geomagnetic data of

long-term observations at 17 stations in Japan have been analyzed using the same method

in Han et al. 2015. Ratios of diurnal variation range between the reference station KAK

and the target stations have been computed. After removing seasonal variations, the 15-

day backward running mean values of the ratios in the vertical component shows a clear

anomaly exceeding the statistical threshold about 2 months before the mega event at both

ESA and MIZ stations in the Tohoku Region. Locations of anomalies in spatial

distribution show a good correlation with the epicenter of the Mw 9.0 earthquake. These

spatiotemporal results are consistent with those obtained from other independent

observations such as groundwater level and GPS displacements. The coupling of multiple

pre-earthquake phenomena may help to understand the preparation process of a mega

earthquake in the subduction zone.

Keywords seismo-magnetic phenomena; anomalous geomagnetic diurnal variation;

coupling of multiple pre-earthquake phenomena; the Tohoku earthquake

2
1. Introduction

There have been many reports on electromagnetic field changes associated with

earthquakes in a very wide frequency range from megahertz to quasi-DC (e.g. Hayakawa

and Fujinawa (eds.), 1994; Hayakawa and Molchanov (eds.), 2002). These phenomena

known as seismo-electromagnetic phenomena have been intensively studied for some

decades all over the world (e.g., Park, 1996; Johnston, 1997; Pulinets et al., 2003;

Pulinets and Ouzounov, 2011; Hattori, 2004; Sarkar at al., 2007). The seismo-

electromagnetic phenomena in the lithosphere are commonly recorded by passive

ground-based observations of electric and/or magnetic fields (Hayakawa and Molchanov

(eds.), 2002). One of the most promising candidates is the measurement of ULF

electromagnetic phenomena (e.g., Park, 1996; Johnston, 1997; Hattori, 2004). Until now,

a large number of ULF electromagnetic phenomena associated with earthquakes has been

reported (Nagao et al., 2002; Uyeda et al., 2002, 2009a, 2009b; Hattori et al., 2004a,

2004b, 2013a; Yen et al., 2004; Zhuang et al., 2005; Telesca and Hattori, 2007; Bleier et

al., 2009; Han et al., 2009, 2011; Zhao et al., 2009, 2010; Chavez et al., 2010; Chen et al.,

2010, 2013; Dunson et al., 2011; Huang, 2011a, 2011b, 2015; Wen at al., 2012; Xu et al.,

2013; Febriani et al., 2014; Shekotov and Hayakawa, 2015; Jiang et al., 2016). Especially,

some statistical studies of ULF (ultra-low-frequency) seismo-magnetic phenomena in

Kanto, Japan (Hattori et al., 2013b; Han et al., 2014) have confirmed the existence of

such pre-earthquake signals. Furthermore, plenty of other pre-earthquake phenomena

such as ionosphere disturbance (e.g., Liu et al., 2000; Parrot et al., 2006; Píša et al., 2013),

crustal deformation (e.g., Chen et al., 2011; Wang at al., 2013), and ground water

perturbations (e.g., Koizumi et al., 2004) have been reported. The integrated analysis of

3
multi-observations may help to reveal the complex earthquake preparation phase (De

Santis et al., 2015; Zeng et al., 2015).

Recently, Xu et al. (2013) has reported unusual behaviors of geomagnetic diurnal

variation (GDV) prior to the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake (Mw 9.0,

hereafter, the Tohoku earthquake). They investigated the ratios of GDV range between

the target station ESA and the remote reference station KAK. According to their results,

there was a clear increase of the ratios in the vertical component about 2 months before

the mega event. To validate the results claimed in Xu et al. (2013), Han et al. (2015)

applied further investigations of GDV associated with the Tohoku earthquake by using a

much longer data observed at KAK and ESA stations during 1997~2012. They found the

anomaly shown by Xu et al. (2013) was unique over a 16-year long background, and

further discussions indicated that the anomaly was unlikely caused by strong

geomagnetic storms or a statistical fluke. However, Xu et al. (2013) and Han et al. (2015)

did not analyze the data observed at other geomagnetic stations in Japan. Whether the

geomagnetic anomaly appears only in the Tohoku area is unclear. Meanwhile, other pre-

earthquake phenomena of the Tohoku event such as foreshock activity (Kato et al., 2012),

seismicity changes (Nanjo et al., 2012; Varotsos et al., 2013; Sarlis et al., 2013; Skordas

and Sarlis, 2014), groundwater level and temperature variations (Orihara, et al., 2014),

and GPS surface displacements (Chen et al., 2014, Hattori et al., 2014) have been

reported. The linkage between the magnetic anomalies and other pre-earthquake

phenomena has not yet been discussed in previous studies.

To clarify the spatial distribution of GDV anomalies prior to the Tohoku earthquake,

temporal-spatial analyses are applied by utilizing data from 17 geomagnetic stations

4
distributed in the whole Japan region in this study. The possible coupling effects among

different pre-earthquake phenomena and the behind physics are discussed to understand

the preparation process of mega earthquakes in the subduction zone.

2. Data analysis

The Tohoku earthquake of magnitude Mw 9.0 was a mega-thrust earthquake that

occurred at 14:46 LT (Local Time) on March 11, 2011 in Japan. In this study, we used the

data from 17 geomagnetic stations distributed in the whole Japan region. Three of the

stations are operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), and the rest are run by

the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI). Table.1 gives the details of the

geomagnetic stations. Fig. 1 shows the locations of the epicenter and the stations. The

original data were absolute values of the horizontal (H), declination (D), and vertical (Z)

components, with 1-min sampling rate.

The GDV has been considered as a potential candidate to monitor ground conductivity

changes that possibly occurred during the preparation process of large earthquakes (Zhao

et al., 1990; Zhao and Qian, 1994; Tang et al., 1998; Tokunaga, 1999; Manga et al., 2003).

So far, many reports indicated that GDV could be affected by large earthquakes (e.g.,

Duma and Ruzhin, 2003; Liu et al., 2006a; Han et al., 2009). In previous studies, the ratio

of GDV ranges between a target station and a reference station has been proved to be an

effective parameter for earthquake monitoring (Liu et al., 2006a; Chen et al., 2010; Xu et

al., 2013). This analysis focuses on the long-term variation (GDV) and is particularly

useful for low sampling rate data. Following the previous study of Han et al. (2015), we

chose KAK station as a reference station. The ratio of GDV ranges between the KAK

5
station and other stations listed in Table.1 was analyzed. As the anomaly was detected in

the Z component in the previous studies (Xu et al., 2013; Han et al. 2015), here we

focused on the results of the Z component. The data processing procedures are explained

below.

First, the outliers of unnaturally large or low values in the geomagnetic data were

removed by using the threshold of annual median ± 300 nT. To minimize the influences

of spike noises, a ‘db5’ wavelet filter has been applied to the original data. The details of

the wavelet filter could be found in Han et al. (2011) and Hattori et al. (2013a, b). We

removed short period signals in the first 5 levels and used the remained signals with the

periods greater than 64 minutes. The diurnal variation range of the Z component (ΔZ)

was calculated by subtracting the minimum value from the maximum value of

geomagnetic fields in a day.

Second, the ratio of daily range between KAK and a target station was computed. The

variations of daily ratios contain clear seasonal changes which consist of obvious annual

and semiannual periods (Han et al., 2015). In order to remove the seasonal variations, the

‘db5’ wavelet filter was employed again, and we only used the signals in the first 6 levels

(periods less than 128 days). The ratio in Z component after removing the seasonal

variations was denoted as Rz'.

Third, the average value of the ratio Rz' in the 15-day backward running window was

computed. According to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Space Weather Scale for geomagnetic storms, Kp indices of 6 or greater present

moderate-strong geomagnetic storm activities. To eliminate the influences of these storms,

we excluded the data of Rz' when there were one or more Kp indices greater than 5 during

6
the day and calculated the 15-day average. The result was denoted by Rz*. Here we chose

the 15-day window because it has been frequently used to obtain a reliable background

variation in previous ionosphere studies (Liu et al., 2006b; Kon et al., 2011).

The above data analysis method is the same as those in Xu et al. (2013) and Han et al.

(2015), except performing the 15-day running window. More details about data analysis

can be found in the two previous studies. The data of each station listed in Table1 have

been analyzed. To compare the results of different stations, the Rz* value then is

normalized by its corresponding standard deviation σ in each station.

3. Results

Fig. 2 shows the results of normalized Rz* at the ESA and MIZ stations in the Tohoku

area. The MIZ station is about 20 km southwest to the ESA station. In Figs. 2(a) and (b),

the variations of Rz* are quite similar. Both show a unique enhancement exceeding the 4σ

statistical threshold in the beginning of the year 2011, about two months before the

Tohoku earthquake. Fig. 2(c) gives the number of non-moderate-strong storm days

employed for calculation in the 15-day window. Fig. 2(d) presents the variation of Kp

index over the 16 years from 1997 to 2012. The values of Kp index are normal when the

anomaly appears. Hence, the unique anomaly derived from a 16 years background is

unlikely related to the variation of Kp index. Moreover, both ESA and MIZ show clear

anomalies at the same time, suggesting that the anomaly may not be resulted from

observation system error or artificial noises. To find out whether the anomaly is a

regional phenomenon, the Rz* values in other regions of Japan have been investigated.

Fig. 3 shows variations of the normalized Rz* during 2010-2012 in the different

7
regions of Japan: (a) and (b) show the results of the MMB and YOK stations to the north

of the epicenter, respectively; (c) and (d) indicate the results of the ESA and MIZ stations

in the Tohoku region close to the epicenter, respectively; (e) and (f) present the results of

the TTK and KNY stations to the south of the epicenter, respectively. A green vertical line

indicates the time of the Tohoku earthquake. Only the ESA and MIZ stations in the

Tohoku region show the anomaly. Stations in other regions do not present anomalous

changes prior to the Tohoku earthquake.

In order to clarify the spatial characteristics of the anomaly before the Tohoku

earthquake, we plot normalized Rz* of each station on January 18, 2011 when anomalies

arise in the ESA and MIZ stations. Fig. 4 demonstrates the result of spatial distribution.

The black triangles represent the geomagnetic stations. The Rz* values are interpolated

using adjustable tension continuous curvature surface gridding algorithm based on the

GMT software (Wessel and Smith, 1991). In Fig. 4, only the Tohoku area shows

anomalies, indicating a good agreement between the location of the anomaly and the

epicenter of the earthquake.

4. Interpretation

A large number of preseismic phenomena have been reported for the Tohoku

earthquake (Nagao et al., 2014). Katsumata (2011) showed a long-term seismic

quiescence in rupture region started about 23 years before the Tohoku earthquake. Huang

and Ding (2012) also demonstrated clear seismic quiescence between the year 2006 and

2008 in the Tohoku region by Region-Time-Length (RTL) algorithm (Huang, 2004).

Nanjo et al. (2012) claimed a pronounced decade-scale decrease in b value before the

8
earthquake. Kato et al. (2012) analyzed the foreshock sequence and found that slow slip

transients propagating to the initial rupture point. Ito et al. (2013) found two episodic

slow slip events prior to the Tohoku earthquake. The later slip event was almost the same

place as the Mw 9.0 epicenter. Chen et al. (2014) demonstrated crustal movement

changes about two months before the event. Recently, Orihara et al. (2014) and Hattori et

al. (2014) reported preseismic changes of groundwater level and GPS surface motions in

the Tohoku area, respectively. The groundwater well and GPS stations are quite close to

the ESA and MIZ geomagnetic stations, providing an excellent opportunity to investigate

the possible coupling of different pre-earthquake phenomena.

Fig. 5(a) shows the locations of Goyo groundwater well (black square), No. 960546

GPS station (purple dot), and the ESA and MIZ stations (blue triangles). The Goyo well

is a confined well of a depth 2 km. The distance between the GPS station and the

groundwater well is about 10 km. The East-West component data of the GPS station is

given in Fig. 5(b), where the east direction is plus. In Fig. 5(b), the red line estimated by

the least square method represents the trend of motion at the GPS station (Hattori et al.,

2014). The trend changes from westward to eastward in the end of January, 2011. The

groundwater level of the Goyo well is shown in Fig. 5(c) (modified from Orihara et al.,

2014). There is a clear drop in groundwater level at the end of December, 2010, about

three months before the Tohoku earthquake. Taking into account the results shown in

Fig.2, three different kinds of anomalies derived from independent observations arise

closely in a short time span prior to the mega earthquake. Is this just a coincidence, or is

there physical mechanism behind?

Seismologists have proposed the earthquake generation cycle which consists of the

9
following four elements (Hashimoto and Matsu’ura, 2002): (I) Tectonic loading due to

relative plate motion; (II) Quasi-static rupture nucleation; (III) Dynamic rupture

occurrence; (IV) Stress redistribution and fault strength recovery. In the element (II),

decoupling and possible pre-slip may occur on the plate boundary (Shibazaki and

Matsu'ura, 1992; Ruiz et al., 2014). Based on this hypothesis, a physical model for the

pre-earthquake phenomena of the Tohoku event has been proposed. Fig. 6 shows a

schematic of the mechanism modified from Orihara et al. (2014). In the Tohoku region,

the Pacific plate (PAC) subducts the North American Plate (NAM) from east to west at a

velocity of about 11 cm/year (Taira, 2001). When the stress approaches a critical stage,

decoupling and precursory slow slip may start around the plate boundary. This is the first

step of the preseismic phenomena as shown in Fig. 6(a). The pre-slip partially releases

the stress and changes the strain in the crust of the NAM plate. As a result, in the second

step as shown in Fig. 6(b), ground expansion and confined groundwater drop can be

expected. The perturbations of groundwater may cause changes in ground conductivities,

and consequently bring about modulation of GDV via induction effects (Draganov et al.

1991; Surkov 1999). The movements of groundwater can also create underground

currents and change magnetic fields via electrokinetic effect (Enomoto, 2012; Ren et al.,

2012, 2015, 2016; Zhang et al., 2013; Huang et al., 2015). Therefore, we detected clear

GDV anomalies in Figs. 2(a) and (b) when the groundwater level changed in Fig. 5(c). In

the third step as shown in Fig. 6(c), when the unconfined groundwater in the shallow well

flows into the confined water well (Orihara et al., 2014), the water level in the unconfined

well drops, leading to possible changes in effective stress and strain near the earth surface.

As claimed in Orihara et al. (2014), the unconfined ground water in the Shogen-ji temple

10
well (depth around 2 m, located about 10 km east to the Goyo well) dropped about one

month before the Tohoku earthquake. This is in good agreement with the trend change of

movements at the GPS station in Fig. 5(b), indicating the pre-earthquake information has

propagated from the deep earth to the ground surface.

5. Discussion and Conclusion

In order to illuminate the anomaly detected at the ESA and MIZ stations, Fig. 7 shows

the original record of geomagnetic data of the two and the KAK reference station in the

beginning of 2011. The corresponding AE, Kp, and Dst indices are also plotted for

reference. The space weather during the period is quiet, except for a slight storm on

January 7 (NOAA Space Weather Scale for geomagnetic storms). The anomaly are not

likely resulted from the slight storm, because (1) during the 16 years long period, there

are a number of slight storms, but only in January 2011 we could detect the anomaly; (2)

as seen in Fig. 7, the diurnal variation ranges of ESA and MIZ are clearly smaller than

usual from January 4 to January 14, indicating that the anomalous behavior of

geomagnetic fields appear not only on the slight storm day but also on the quiet days.

Therefore, the anomaly is probably not caused by global geomagnetic disturbances, but

induced by local ground activities. To understand this unique phenomenon, the generation

mechanism should be investigated.

A large number of pre-earthquake electromagnetic phenomena have been reported,

and various experiments and simulations have been conducted to understand the

mechanisms (Fenoglio et al., 1995; Yoshida, 2001; Yoshida and Ogawa, 2004; Freund et

al., 2006; Freund, 2011; Huang and Ikeya, 1998; Huang and Lin, 2010a, 2010b; Shinbrot

11
et al., 2012; Leeman et al., 2014). As discussed before, the induction effects and the

electrokinetic effects may be responsible for the anomalous changes of GDV. To clarify

which mechanism dominates the geomagnetic filed changes, some detailed data analysis

is required. The transfer function analysis that can monitor underground conductivities is

now on-going at the ESA and MIZ stations. The results are expected to provide a further

understanding of pre-earthquake electromagnetic phenomena.

In Figs. 2(a) and (b), the Rz* almost exceeds the threshold in October, 2004. Besides

the anomalies arose before the Tohoku earthquake in the ESA and MIZ stations, there

were a few other anomalies not followed by any large earthquakes in the other stations

during the 16 years long period. These ‘false’ anomalies also appeared in other

observations. As seen in Figs. 5(b) and (c), there was a trend change in October, 2010 and

a clear water level drop in August, 2008, respectively. Anomalies in a single observation

can be created by many factors, and the earthquake is just a possible one. Generally, the

anomalous change of one single parameter may not be a sufficient condition for an

earthquake. However, by integrating different observations, we can eliminate the isolated

‘false’ anomalies and thus may be able to make better monitoring of the preparation stage

of a large/mega earthquake. Therefore, just as De Santis et al. (2015) claimed, multiple

observations and interdisciplinary investigations are crucial for pre-earthquake

phenomena study.

In conclusion, we have conducted time-spatial analysis of geomagnetic data of long-

term observations at 17 stations in Japan. The result shows a clear anomaly exceeding the

statistical threshold about 2 months before the mega event in both ESA and MIZ stations

in the Tohoku Region. Similar results could not be found in other regions of Japan at that

12
time. Spatial distributions of the ratios show a good agreement between the location of

the anomalies and the epicenter of the Mw 9.0 earthquake. These spatiotemporal results

are consistent with those obtained from other independent observations such as

groundwater level and GPS displacements. The coupling of multiple pre-earthquake

phenomena may help to understand the preparation process of mega earthquakes in the

subduction zone.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) and the Geospatial

Information Authority of Japan (GSI) for providing geomagnetic data. The authors thank

the GSI for providing the F3 daily data of the GPS station. The geomagnetic indices were

downloaded from the World Data Center for Geomagnetism at Kyoto University. This

study is partially supported by Grand-in-Aids for Scientific Research of Japan Society for

Promotion of Science (19403002 and 26249060), National Institute of Information and

Communication Technology, Japan (R & D promotion funding international joint

research), International Space Science Institute (2013-298).

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Figure caption

Fig. 1. Locations of the epicenter of the Mw 9.0 Tohoku earthquake (red star) and the

geomagnetic stations (blue triangles) listed in Table 1.

Fig. 2. Normalized 15-day backward running average (Rz*) with ±4σ thresholds shown

by red dashed lines at the ESA station (a) and the MIZ station (b). (c) The number of days

without moderate-strong magnetic storms in each 15-day window. (d) Kp index and

threshold of moderate-strong storm (a red line). A green vertical line indicates the time of

the Tohoku earthquake (Mw 9.0).

Fig. 3. Variations of Rz* during 2010-2012 in different regions of Japan. (a) The MMB

station in the Hokkaido Prefecture. (b) The YOK station in the Aomori Prefecture. (c)

The ESA station in the Tohoku Region. (d) The MIZ station in the Tohoku Region. (e)

The TTK station in the Kansai Region. (f) The KNY station in the Kyushu Region. Red

dashed lines represent the ±4σ thresholds. A green vertical line indicates the time of the

Tohoku earthquake (Mw 9.0).

Fig. 4. Spatial distribution of Rz* on January 18, 2011. The red star indicates the epicenter

of the Tohoku earthquake. The black triangles represent the geomagnetic stations. The R z*

values are interpolated using adjustable tension continuous curvature surface gridding

algorithm based on the GMT software.

31
Fig. 5. (a) The locations of Goyo groundwater well (black square), No. 960546 GPS

station (purple dot), the ESA and MIZ stations (blue triangles), and the epicenter of the

Tohoku earthquake (red star). (b) The East-West directional movements at the GPS

station shown in (a), where the east direction is plus. The red line estimated by the least

square method represents the trend of motion at the GPS station (modified from Hattori et

al., 2014). (c) The groundwater level of the Goyo well shown in (a) (modified from

Orihara et al., 2014).

Fig. 6. A schematic of the mechanism for the coupling of pre-earthquake phenomena in

the subduction zone (modified from Orihara et al., 2014). (a) Step 1: decoupling on the

plate boundary and preseismic slow slip. (b) Step 2: Depression of confined groundwater

in the deep well and appearance of electromagnetic disturbance. (c) Step 3: Depression of

unconfined groundwater in the shallow well and alteration of the surface motion. Note

the GPS movement is related to a far reference point in the Eurasian Plate.

Fig. 7. The raw data of geomagnetic diurnal variations and the geomagnetic indices. (a)

The blue, green, and red lines show the data of the ESA, MIZ, and KAK stations,

respectively. (b) The AE indices. (c) The Kp indices. (d) The Dst indices.

32
Figure6-1
Figure6-2
Figure6-3
 Table 1. List of geomagnetic stations.

No. Station Name (Code) Geographic coordinates Magnetic Analyzed Operating

Lon( ), Lat( ), Alt Lat ( ) data period institution
(m)
Ref. Kakioka (KAK) 140.19, 36.23, 36 27.76 1997-2012 JMA
1 Memambetsu (MMB) 144.19, 43.91, 42 35.72 1997-2012 JMA
2 Akaigawa (AKA) 140.82, 43.07, 140 34.60 1999-2012 GIS
3 Yokohama (YOK) 141.24, 40.99, 20 32.57 1999-2012 GIS
4 Esashi (ESA) 141.36, 39.23, 396 30.83 1997-2012 GIS
5 Mizusawa (MIZ) 141.21, 39.11, 125 30.70 2000-2012 GIS
6 Haramachi (HAR) 140.95, 37.62, 60 29.20 1999-2012 GIS
7 Shika (SIK) 136.77, 37.08, 60 28.33 1999-2012 GIS
8 Haramachi (HAG) 137.19, 35.99, 700 27.28 1999-2012 GIS
9 Otaki (OTA) 140.23, 35.30, 70 26.84 2001-2012 GIS
10 Kanozan (KNZ) 139.96, 35.25, 342 26.76 1997-2012 GIS
11 Yoshiwa (YOS) 132.18, 34.48, 900 25.42 1999-2012 GIS
12 Totsugawa (TTK) 135.80, 33.93, 600 25.13 1999-2012 GIS
13 Muroto (MUR) 134.12, 33.32, 280 24.40 2004-2012 GIS
14 Kuju (KUJ) 131.26, 33.06, 840 23.59 1999-2012 GIS
15 Kanoya (KNY) 130.88, 31.42, 107 22.30 1997-2012 JMA
16 Okinawa (OKI) 128.13, 26.63, 140 17.37 1999-2012 GIS

33
Highlights:

A unique geomagnetic anomaly was detected at both ESA and MIZ stations.
The location of anomaly was consistent with the epicenter of the Mw 9.0 earthquake.
The anomaly was in good agreement with groundwater change and GPS surface motion.
The coupling effects among different pre-earthquake phenomena were discussed.

34