Thermal anomalies and crustal deformation related to the November 26, 2019, Albania (Durrës) earthquake

On November 26, 2019, a strong, fatal earthquake of magnitude Mw6.4 hit in the northwestern Albania, close to the city of Durrës. Since the end of August, almost 3 months earlier, many foreshocks occurred in the broader area. The strongest foreshock (Mw5.6) was recorded on September 21, 2019. The scope of the present work is to investigate the existence of probable thermal anomalies related to the regional seismic activity. For this reason, ten years of MODIS LST remotely sensed images were combined with the Robust Satellite Technique and the daily RETIRA (Robust Estimator of TIR Anomalies) index. In this way we managed to identify and map 16 pre-seismic and post-seismic thermal anomalies that occurred in the broader area of seismic activation. Additionally, a pair of Sentinel-1 Copernicus satellite SAR images was processed to obtain the corresponding displacement map. Finally, the spatiotemporal relation of the two datasets was explored from the perspective of the development of a multiparametric precursory system.