Ronald Karel
earthquake researcher & novelist
He discovered the lithosphere-lower atmosphere connection of earthquake pre-signals thanks to ionized clouds in Istanbul when he was only 16 years old.
www.geocosmo.net
There is one physical process that is capable of giving us useful information for an impending earthquake, this results from stress-activation of electronic charge carriers deep within the Earth’s crust. Though the build-up of pre-earthquake (pre-EQ) stresses occurs kilometers deep near the focal point of an oncoming earthquake, the consequences can be detected at the Earth’s surface in multiple ways, in the groundwater, at the ground surface, and in the atmosphere above the affected area. These pre-EQ signals allow us to recognize an impending earthquake anywhere from days to weeks in advance.
Ronald Karel, a dual French-‐Turkish citizen, has had a long-standing interest in meteorology, in particular in clouds and unusual cloud formations. At the age of 13-‐14, he began weather forecasts across his native Turkey. At age 16, in the afternoon of 28 March 1970, he noticed strange “non-‐ meteorological clouds” above Istanbul. During the following night, a disastrous magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck near Gediz. The same method, looking for unusual cloud formations, led to several more earthquake predictions. Over the years Ronald Karel travelled to different countries in Europe to talk about his approach. He visited WMO in Geneva, UNESCO in Paris, İmperial University in London, and other organizations but no-‐one wanted to listen. However, in the early 1970s, the technology was not yet advanced enough to capture abnormal weather conditions. During his military service in Askale/Erzurum, Turkey, in the mid-‐1970s Ronald Karel further developed his “meteoquake” theory. However, it continued to be rejected for over 30 years. From the University of Jussieu in Paris to the New York University in New York City, to the Russian Academy of Sciences and NOAA in Boulder, Colorado, USA, no organization showed interest. In 2006 Ronald Karel created the Meteoquake Research Centre in London and the İnternational Society for Earthquake Precursors, which has been joined by many scientists from around the world. He participated in the 2006 İUGG Conference in Perugia, İtaly, and the first DEMETER Workshop 2007 in Toulouse, France. Recently Dr. Friedemann Freund of NASA provided evidence that massive air ionization at the ground-‐to-‐air interface may be linked to the build-‐up of tectonic stresses in the Earth’s crust before a major earthquake, thereby providing for the first time a physical explanation for unusual cloud formation. Since then several research groups around the world have started to express interest in the Meteoquake theory.