A perspective to thermal infrared anomalies before earthquakes from the relationship between satellite infrared brightness temperature and terrestrial heat flow
从卫星红外亮温与大地热流的关系看地震前的热红外异常

It is often accepted that thermal anomalies on the earth surface can occur before some major earthquakes.But it is very controversial whether such thermal anomalies can be observed by satellite remote sensing technology.We attempt to explore the possibility and problems on the observation of thermal anomalies before earthquakes using satellite remote sensing data by analyzing the relationship between thermal infrared brightness temperature and terrestrial heat flow.The result shows that in most cases, brightness temperature increases with the growing terrestrial heat flow at an average rate 0.057℃/Mw·m~(-2).If the terrestrial heat flow anomaly resulted from an earthquake is 100 Mw·m-2，there would be a satellite thermal infrared anomaly about 5.7℃.In different regions, the brightness temperature changes with the terrestrial heat flow at varied rates.Even if satellite thermal infrared anomalies occur before earthquakes, they will have differing expressions.For some regions and seasons, the relationship between brightness temperature and terrestrial heat flow is not obvious, because the brightness temperature data is very likely disturbed by meteorological factors.That implies that the thermal infrared brightness temperature anomalies associated with earthquakes are actually very complicated and cannot be observed sometimes.