DEMETER was above HAITI 3 days before the earthquake

DEMETER was above HAITI 3 days before the earthquake

Observation performed by DEMETER 3 days before the Haiti earthquake (magnitude 7) which occurs on January 12, 2010 at 21.53.09 UT (epicentre located at 18.451°N, 72.445°W). The top panel shows the variation of the electron density recorded at the satellite altitude during night time. The red triangle in the bottom panel indicates the time when the satellite is just above the future epicentre. A decrease of the density is locally observed around this area.

A remarkable event registered by DEMETER before the Samoa earthquake

DEMETER observations 7 days prior to the M8 Samoa Earthquake

DEMETER observations 7 days prior to the M8 Samoa Earthquake which occurred on September 29, 2009 at 17.48.11 UT (location 15.51°S, 187.97°E). From the top to the bottom, the panels show the electron density, the electron temperature, the O+ ion density, and the earthquake occurrences along the satellite orbit. The red triangles indicates the closest approach to the Samoa earthquake and the many aftershocks. It can be observed an increase in the densities and a decrease in the temperature which are well localized above the future epicenter.

Press release concerning the GRL paper by Fullekrug et al. (2009)

DEMETER Exploitation Review at CNES Toulouse

DEMETER Exploitation Review at CNES Toulouse

New version of the platform flight software correcting the datation anomaly of one second

SCIENTIFIC RESULTS

Influence of VLF (Very Low Frequency) transmittters on the ionosphere

NWC in Australia is a very powerful transmitter of the US army (1000 kW) which sends waves at 19.8 kHz. The figure shows the perturbations induced in the ionosphere by this transmitter around 14.52.30 UT. These perturbations are registered when DEMETER is close. The top panel represents a spectrogram in the HF (High Frequency) range where we can observe a characteristic frequency of the plasma which is excited around 1.8 MHz. The following panel shows a VLF (Very Low Frequency) spectrogram of an electric component with a dramatic increase of the signal over all the frequency range (the transmitter frequency can be observed at 19.8 kHz). Then the electronic density and temperature measured by the Langmuir probe are plotted. The curves indicate a large variation of these ionospheric parameters as in the bottom panel which shows the ion temperature measured by the plasma analyzer. During two years more than fifty typical events as this one have been registered and the orbit projections at the time of the perturbations have been plotted on the following map.

The star indicates the transmitter position in the North-West of Australia and the square indicates the geomagnetic position of this transmitter at the DEMETER altitude (700 km). One can see that these perturbations are centred at 700 km around the magnetic field line whose foot corresponds to the ground position of the transmitter. This ionospheric heating covers an area of about 500000 km².

Second DEMETER Exploitation Review