What with earthquakes being in the news recently, it might be reassuring to look at a recent New Scientist piece on a potential early warning sign that a tremor is on its way. Maybe. Chinese seismologists say they’ve found strange cloud formations signaling upcoming earthquakes:
Guo and Wang suggest that an eruption of hot gases from inside the fault could have caused water in the clouds to evaporate. Another idea is that ionisation may be involved: Friedemann Freund at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, recently demonstrated that when rocks are squeezed, positively charged ions form in the air above. The trouble is that ions usually help to form clouds, not dissipate them.