Seafloor pressure change and analysis of its effect in major earthquakes over japan

Pressure changes on the ocean floor may have a relationship with earthquakes that occur around the world. New satellite missions such as the GRACE satellite are able to provide invaluable information about ocean circulations and pressure changes on the seafloor. This study aims to investigate potential relationships between seafloor pressure changes and major earthquakes in Japan. Japan is selected due to its high tectonic activity. The seafloor pressure change time series are obtained from the GRACE satellite and compared with a time series of major earthquakes over Japan during 2002 and 2019. In the analysis, continuous wavelet transforms and wavelet-coherence methods are used. The cross-wavelet transform and phase coherence analysis are applied to determine the correlation between them. The results show that there may be a relationship between seafloor pressure change time series obtained by GRACE satellite and major earthquakes especially between 2011 and 2012. This indicates that seafloor pressure data from GRACE may be used as additional data to study the relationship between major earthquakes and seafloor pressure changes.