Statistics and Analysis of the Relations between Rainstorm Floods and Earthquakes

Abstract

The frequent occurrence of geophysical disasters under climate change has drawn Chinese scholars to pay their attention to disaster relations. If the occurrence sequence of disasters could be identified, long-term disaster forecast could be realized. Based on the Earth Degassing Effect (EDE) which is valid, this paper took the magnitude, epicenter, and occurrence time of the earthquake, as well as the epicenter and occurrence time of the rainstorm floods as basic factors to establish an integrated model to study the correlation between rainstorm floods and earthquakes. 2461 severe earthquakes occurred in China or within 3000 km from China and the 169 heavy rainstorm floods occurred in China over the past 200+ years as the input data of the model. The computational results showed that although most of the rainstorm floods have nothing to do with the severe earthquakes from a statistical perspective, some floods might relate to earthquakes. This is especially true when the earthquakes happen in the vapor transmission zone where rainstorms lead to abundant water vapors. In this regard, earthquakes are more likely to cause big rainstorm floods. However, many cases of rainstorm floods could be found after severe earthquakes with a large extent of uncertainty.