In this images of infrared radiation in the days before the March 11 earthquake, the red circle indicates the epicenter and the red lines are tectonic faults.
What’s the News: Scientists analyzing the March 11 earthquake in Japan will have the benefit of some of the most sensitive and comprehensive atmospheric data yet, thanks to satellites monitoring climate. And a team has now reported a strange effect—a sudden spike in the temperature in the atmosphere above the quake site—detected just before the event. If the spike was related to the quake, and other earthquakes do the same thing, it might help scientists predict such cataclysms in the future. How the Heck:
The team’s analysis, which has not yet been published in a journal yet (only in the non-peer reviewed arXiv), finds that before the earthquake, the number of electrons in the ionosphere above the epicenter increased dramatically, peaking three days ...
