Remote Sensing, Vol. 11, Pages 2411: Land Surface Temperature Variation Following the 2017 Mw 7.3 Iran Earthquake (Remote Sensing)

During an earthquake, crustal deformation, fluid flow, and temperature variation are coupled; however, earthquake-related land surface temperature (LST) variations remain unclear. To determine whether post-seismic fluid migration can cause changes in LST, and taking the Mw 7.3 2017 Iran earthquake as an example, we modeled surface cooling (CA) and warming (WA) areas induced by co-seismic slip and fluid migration using a thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) coupled numerical simulation. Moreover, using nighttime LST data with 15-min resolution, the daily attenuation coefficient k of nighttime LST was extracted by attenuation function fitting, and the trend of the k time series was analyzed using the Mann–Kendall and Sen’s methods. Based on the comparison of k trends between the post-seismic and 2010–2016 periods, we obtained cooling and warming trends for the modeled CA and WA. The numerical simulation and observational data show good consistency, and both indicate that fluid migration caused by crustal deformation can lead to changes in LST. The numerical simulations show that after the Iran earthquake, the surface projection area of co-seismic slip correlated with a cooling area (CA), while the surrounding area correlated with a warming area (WA). For the LST observational data, the post-seismic k trends of the calculated CA and WA are positive and negative, indicating sustained cooling and warming processes, respectively. This study provides evidence that LST variation is caused by co-seismic crustal deformation and fluid migration and reveals the coupled evolution of deformation, fluid, and temperature fields. The results provide new insights into the mechanisms of seismic thermal anomalies.