Modeling of changes in the tidal response of the environment to an impending earthquake

It has become possible to apply efficiently Beaumont and Berger’s idea (1974) about the possibility to predict earthquakes using continuous monitoring of temporal variations of the tidal response only in recent years, with the appearance of GPS data on the field of the Earth’s surface displacements in seismic regions, as well as with the appearance of the Global Seismographic Network (GSN) containing the tidal tiltmetric and gravimetric data in the vicinities of the epicenters of strong earthquakes in Peru (2001), Sumatra (2004), and Chile (2010) before and after the strongest seismic events. Below, we present the results of the modeling of temporal variations of the tidal response of the environment in the vicinities of the focus of catastrophic earthquakes. The model of the focus includes data on the expansion and orientation of the fault surface, as well as on the discontinuity of the tangential component of the displacement vector on the opposite shores. The model is constructed from the GPS data on horizontal and vertical displacements of the Earth’s surface.