Title: Study on generation mechanism of anomalous acoustic-gravity waves before the 2011 Beijing earthquake(M_L=3.0) 

Author: LYU Jun YANG Yichun FENG Haonan CHUNCHUZOV Igor TENG Pengxiao  

Affiliation: Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences; Oboukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences 

Abstract: Observation results of abnormal acoustic-gravity waves before a Beijing earthquake(M_L=3.0) are presented.During this period,abnormalities of earth surface tilt variations were also recorded.The cross-correlations between the both values are high,which reach maximal values of 0.5 in the area close to the epicenter.The correlations decrease with increasing distances from the epicenter.It was proposed that generation of the anomalous waves may be associated with the pressure and wind perturbations in the air flow caused by slowly shaking mountains during slow surface motion preceding the earthquake in Beijing.Based on the wind velocity data taken from a 350 m meteorological tower in Beijing,the propagation of ducted acoustic-gravity waves in a two-layer model of the atmosphere was numerically simulated.It is shown that characteristic periods,amplitudes and velocities of the simulated phases which were assumed from non-stationary air flow relative to mountains are approximate to the observed phases.A consistency between the simulated results and observation data indicates that a slow surface motion may be a possible source of the anomalous acoustic-gravity waves observed prior to the earthquake.