The multiple parameter disturbances and their coupling process around 2025 Dingri Mw7.1 earthquake in China

On 7 January 2025, there took place a strong earthquake in Dingri with Mw7.1 in southern Tibet, China. Due to the complex geographical and geological conditions at this region, only a few ground-based seismic and geophysical observation stations have been installed here, but some typical anomalies have been detected before the earthquake occurrence and gave short-term and imminent prediction opinions, especially from the space-borne technologies. To reveal the whole preparation processes, multiple geophysical and geochemical observation data were collected and analyzed in this research, including regional geomagnetic field and gravity field in the lithosphere, atmospheric infrared longwave radiation (OLR) and methane gas (CH4), GNSS TEC and satellite-detected plasma and magnetic field disturbances in the ionosphere. The temporal and spatial developing characteristics of these anomalies is summarized preceding the Dingri earthquake, providing crucial support for understanding the precursory anomalies and their coupled formation mechanisms, as well as scientific basis for assessing seismic conditions in the region. The results show that, 1) Some methods provided explicit analytical predictions both before and after the earthquake, offering scientific support for regional seismic hazard assessment; 2) Pre-seismic anomalies exhibited rich development, with over 30 cumulative anomalies occurring before the earthquake, particularly showing concentrated development within the 10 days preceding the event; 3) Spatially, anomalies initially developed at long distances in the Earth-ionosphere system, and gradually converging toward the epicenter, as while the anomaly development progressively decreased in the altitude; 4) The thermal infrared and methane gas anomalies emerged during the pre-seismic phase, and fully covered the earthquake occurrence period, indicating that observations closer to the ground surface may provide more significant indicative value for the future epicenter. This seismic research demonstrates the potential of space-based Earth observation technologies to fill vast monitoring gaps in western regions of China and enhances the effectiveness of cross-layer integrated approaches. Future efforts should optimize comprehensive analytical prediction techniques by leveraging the strengths and addressing the weaknesses of different detection technologies, to improve the accuracy of spatio-temporal prediction of the three key seismic parameters.