The Meteorological Anomalies before and afterthe Wenchuan Earthquake

Some researchers have discussed the correlations between meteorological anomalies and earthquakes, but a question remains about wheather such correlations exist for the Wenchuan Earthquake.This paper thus utilizes the NCEP Reanalysis Data to study the issue.The study is based on the five meteorological indices, i.e.the daily average temperature, daily maximum temperature, daily minimum temperature, daily average precipitation rate, and daily average pressure.Such indices of 2008 are compared to their respective long-term means and standard deviations to identify anomalies near the strong earthquake in May 12, 2008.The results show that meteorological anomalies before the earthquake do exist, and centers of the distributions of the anomalies are around Wenchuan.The anomalies persisted for some time after the earthquake, and the anomalies are overall relatively long lasting and strong.The meteorological anomalies that occurred prior to the earthquake could be the earthquake indicators, but given the complexity of an earthquake more thorough investigations are needed to actually use such anomalies to predict earthquakes.Nevertheliss, the meteorological anomalies indeed give us some clues to the earthquake, suggesting the relationships between the local meteorological anomalies and a strong earthquake are worth to be studied.