Subionospheric VLF/LF monitoring of ionospheric perturbations for the 2004 Mid-Niigata earthquake and their structure and dynamics

This paper reports on the detailed spatial structure and temporal dynamics of the ionospheric perturbations associated with the huge 2004 Mid-Niigata earthquake in Japan. The terminator time method in VLF/LF subionospheric propagation has been used to deduce the presence and dynamics of the seismo-ionospheric perturbations by making full use of our Japanese VLF/LF network observations. It is found that significant shifts were observed in terminator time for some selected paths, a few to several days before the earthquake, and we obtained the anisotropic shape of the inferred ionospheric perturbation likely elongated along the fault lines there. The temporal dynamics of inhomogeneity of the perturbations is suggested on the basis of a comparison of the observed terminator time shift and theoretical full-wave computations (2D FDTD and 3D full-wave scattering).