PRINCIPAL COMPONENT ANALYSIS AND LOCAL CORRELA-TION TRACKING AS TOOLS FOR REVEALING AND ANALYZING SEISMO-ELECTROMAGNETIC SIGNAL OF EARTHQAUKE

This study provides new seismo-electromagnetic data processing methods to extract the anomalous signals by combining the principal component analysis(PCA)and local correlation tracking(LCT)methods. The PCA method can separate signals of different frequencies by projecting them to different axes according to their energy. So it can solve the problems of identifying the relatively weak signals in strong interference background to a certain extent. The LCT method is more suitable for non-stationary signal processing compared with classical cross-correlation method. This method is based on the good spatial correlation between the magnetic field components of different ELF stations to pick up the correlation coefficient, so as to achieve the purpose of weak anomalies signals identification. As a case study of the M4.6 Jinggu earthquake in Yunnan, China, we investigated the electromagnetic data observed by ELF stations near the epicenter. First, we applied the PCA method to the magnetic-filed data and got the temporal variation of percentage of each principal component. The results indicate that the contribution of the second principal components, which may relate with the earthquake, increased significantly about a week before the earthquake. Then, we applied the LCT method to the magnetic-filed data processing as well, and the results of both north-south and east-west magnetic field components showed that local correlation coefficient saw anomalies about a week before the earthquake, which had a good corresponding relationship with the former results by PCA method. Both means for the same earthquake case got a consistent conclusion, which not only enhanced the reliability of the results, but also confirmed the effectiveness of two methods applied in the earthquake-related electromagnetic anomalies extraction. We also discussed the possible relationship between these anomalies and the earthquake. Although there are no direct evidence and supporting theories in terms of the relationship between abnormal electromagnetic signals and earthquakes at present, the studies in this paper may strengthen the understanding of seismoelectromagnetic phenomena and promote further research.