Near-earth Electromagnetic Environment and Natural Hazards Disturbances

Book excerpt: Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis, have threatened human communities throughout recorded history. Scientists still face a long-term challenge to reveal the natural hazards' preparation process and precisely predict their occurrences. With space technology development, in the early 1980s, some satellites recorded abnormal electromagnetic emissions, plasma density irregularities, and energetic particle precipitations over active seismic fault zones, volcanic belts, or tsunamis coast. Since then, continuous efforts have been paid to the rock-rupture-processing experiment, ground-space comparative studies. Especially for earthquake science, the electromagnetic precursors might be the most promising tool for the short-term (timescale of hours, days, and weeks) earthquake prediction. In late 2004, France launched the DEMETER (Detection of Electromagnetic (EM) Emissions Transmitted from Earthquake Regions) satellite, which successfully operated from 2004 to 2010. In Febr. 2018, China launched the first seismo-electromagnetism satellite (China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite, CSES) aimed for earthquake monitoring from space.