Search for Tidal Seismicity in Greece Using Different Techniques: Part 3. Correlation with Solar and Lunar Tidal Waves

摘要

The last of a cycle of three papers aimed at searching for the influence of the gravitational tide on regional Greece seismicity using different techniques is presented. Twenty-five nonintersecting samplings of earthquakes in Greece compiled from events with different energy and time intervals were studied in the two previous papers (Desherevskii and Sidorin, 2012d, 2014). Stable diurnal and semidiurnal periodicities (24:00 and 12:00 h) were revealed in the seismicity spectra. Periodicities with a small amplitude with periods close to M_2 and O_1 tidal waves were also found in some samples. The correlation coefficients of all time series of earthquakes were calculated with the following theoretical tide parameters: volume deformation, strain rate, of strain rate modulus, and smoothed diurnal tidal amplitude. As the main result, stable significant correlation of seismicity was revealed with some tidal parameters. However, this could be the result of coincidence in periods of sub-harmonics of the diurnal seismicity rhythm with solar tidal waves. This means that the discovered correlation could simply be caused by the coincidence of two regular components in variations of the compared processes, but not with the gravitational tide. Correlations of seismic activity with solar and lunar tides are studied separately in this paper. This makes possible to separate the influence of gravitational and nongravitational factors. Strong correlation of seismicity was observed only with the solar tide. No stable correlation of seismicity with the lunar tide was revealed. The results can be considered evidence for the non-gravitational origin of seismic activity variations that correlate with the tidal parameters. This means that tidal seismicity variations, if they are real, should have a much smaller amplitude in comparison with diurnal solar variations of nongravitational origin. Similar effects could cause wrong conclusions on the tidal influence on seismicity in some studies.