Meteorological and soil surface effects in gamma radiation time series - Implications for assessment of earthquake precursors

Highlights: • Gamma radiation time series reflect fast and nonlinear soil moisture variations. • Soil moisture changes can be confused with earthquake precursory indicators. • Precipitation and soil moisture data are required for assessing earthquake precursors. - Abstract: Monitoring of environmental radioactivity for the purpose of earthquake prediction requires the discrimination of anomalies of non-tectonic origin from seismically-induced anomalies. This is a challenging task as time series of environmental radioactivity display a complex temporal pattern reflecting a wide range of different physical processes, including meteorological and surface effects. The present study is based on the detailed time series of gamma radiation from the Eastern North Atlantic (ENA) site in the Azores, and on very high resolution precipitation intensity and soil moisture time series. The results show that an abrupt shift in the average level of the gamma radiation time series previously reported as a potential earthquake precursor can also be explained by a corresponding abrupt change in soil moisture. It was concluded that the reduction of false positive earthquake precursors requires the detailed assessment of both precipitation and soil moisture conditions at high temporal resolution.