What causes the remarkable tilt anomalies at the Hancheng geodynamic observatory in Shaanxi Province?

The remarkable tilt anomalies could be the earthquake precursors, but may also be caused by instrumental factors and environmental disturbances. Thus, the question arises on how to distinguish the earthquake precursors from the non-tectonic factors, which is very important to effectively and reasonably detect earthquake precursors. Since 2010, two remarkable tilt anomalies have been recorded by metallic horizontal pendulums in E-W component at the Hancheng observatory in Shannxi Province, and the amount of east- and west-ward tilt approxi-mately reach up to 140″ and 180″, respectively, but these two remarkable tilt anomalies have not been reasonably and clearly interpreted till now. Here, we propose and compare three different causal mechanisms possibly responsible for these anomalous phenomena according to the regional hydrological, tectonic and seismicity characteristics, i.e. ① hydrodynamics-induced surface tilt, ② a long-term slow slip event on the northeastern segment of the Hancheng fault, and ③ variations of the regional tectonic stress field during the anomalous period. We then theoretically calculated the poroelastic deformation and the fault slip amount, and finally inversed the focal mechanism solutions of 85 earthquakes （2.0≤M_L≤4.8） that occurred between 2008 and 2015 with the aim of determining the regional stress field changes （35°N—36°N, 110°E—111°E） in the crust. Our results show that the first possibility can be shown unlikely, but it is difficult to rule out the second and the third possibility according to the current eviden-ce. To further prove and confirm the causal relationship between deformation of tectonic origin and the anomalies, more comprehensive tilt and crustal deformation measurements are necessary in the Hancheng region in the future, furthermore, more intensive researches are also needed to reveal and determine the causal mechanisms of these anomalies. Unfortunately, we fail to find the real causal mechanism, but the approaches used in this study could be helpful to investigate the causal origin of remarkable anomalies recorded by tiltmeters in the near future.