Abstract
Earthquakes brings great destruction to the natural environment including landscapes, rivers, wild life, people and infrastructure. This is a natural disaster, hence, cannot be controlled. However to save human lives and property, this natural calamity can be avoided by predicting its location of occurrence and sensitivity to natural anomalies ahead of time. In the past various factors with possible linkages were studied to predict this phenomenon. In this research, atmospheric anomalies are investigated for their possible potential to stimulate earthquakes. Based on analysed observations it is hypothesized that prior seismicity of an area usually triggers rainfall before an earthquake. The relationship of rainfall and other atmospheric variables with the earthquake were determined using the sensitivity analysis. This analysis graphically showed that in most cases rainfall occurs before an earthquake. Moreover, by depending on the positive results of sensitivity analysis, factor analysis was conducted. This brought forward results which gave statistical relationships of different atmospheric variables with high magnitude and shallow depth earthquakes in the South-Western region of South Asia.
Keyword(s)
Sensitivity, Earthquakes, Atmospheric, Anomalies, Triggered, South Asia