useful in revealing possible precursor seismic phenomena in the ionosphere."
The DEMETER project team also reported similar phenomena preceding a magnitude 8 earthquake that hit Samoa in September 2009. Seven days prior to the earthquake, the satellite recorded "an increase in the densities and a decrease in the temperature (of the ionosphere) which are well localized above the future epicenter."
DEMETER was built on research in the 1990s that first found that changes in the Earth’s surface before major earthquakes disturb the ionosphere, 700 km above the Earth’s surface. A Jan. 24, 2010 article in Alaska’s Anchorage Daily News reported that researchers believe that the ionosphere, made up of negatively charged particles, is drawn downward as positive ions stream up from the Earth’s surface before a quake. DEMETER wasn’t the only such effort, however. A NASA satellite measuring the emission of infrared light from the Earth’s surface came up with similar results. Strong earthquakes are also preceded by marked infrared emissions.
The problem is that such research has been vastly underfunded generally. There are indications that it has even been hindered by the U.S. Geological Survey, which decides who gets earthquake research grants. USGS’s seismologists follow a mechanical model of earthquake hazard assessment, and the agency claims that no electromagnetic research has been shown to be "predictive to the satisfaction of the USGS and the seismological community." Critics accuse the USGS of a conflict of interest which leads it to steer grants to its existing seismological network.
Researchers at NASA have a different approach, however. Friedemann Freund, of NASA’s Ames Research Center, who has developed what is regarded as the most comprehensive seismo-electromagnetic theory, is confident that further advances in this area will make forecasts possible. "We will be able to give practical forecasts for all strong quakes, certainly 7.0, perhaps to 6.0," he said. "You will never know the exact day or the exact epicenter, just as you can never say exactly where lightning will strike. But you can say ’The storm is coming.’"