A Possible Causal Mechanism of Geomagnetic Variations as Observed Immediately before and after the 2011 Tohoku-Oki Earthquake

During the Mw9 Tohoku-Oki earthquake, gradual increases in both ionosphere total electron content (TEC) and geomagnetic declination signals were observed, starting from ~40 minutes before the mainshock, followed by impulsive enhancements ~10 minutes after the mainshock. There have been many studies on pre-seismic TEC enhancements, including their characteristics, debates regarding whether TEC anomalies are real signals or artefacts, and the explainable models, and many studies have reported that the impulsive TEC enhancement was caused by a tsunami-induced neutral atmospheric gravity wave. Since TEC and geomagnetic declination anomalies were synchronized so that their origin should be attributed to the same seismic activities, any models must explain both anomalous phenomena, but not the case considered herein. Compared with the corresponding TEC anomalies, we re-examined the characteristics of geomagnetic variation just before and after the mainshock, focusing on the generation process of the impulsive enhancement immediately after the mainshock. We showed that the observed anomaly could be explained if there are quasi-static electric currents of 20 - 30 kA generated near the epicentre area. The possible mechanism of the current generation is discussed in terms of the ionization process in the atmosphere near the sea surface.