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Published April 2021 | Published
Journal Article Open

Apparent earthquake rupture predictability

Abstract

To what extent can the future evolution of an ongoing earthquake rupture be predicted? This question of fundamental scientific and practical importance has recently been addressed by studies of teleseismic source time functions (STFs) but reaching contrasting conclusions. One study concludes that the initial portion of STFs is the same regardless of magnitude. Another study concludes that the rate at which earthquakes grow increases systematically and strongly with final event magnitudes. Here, we show that the latter reported trend is caused by a selection bias towards events with unusually long durations and by estimates of STF growth made when the STF is already decaying. If these invalid estimates are left out, the trend is no longer present, except during the first few seconds of the smallest events in the data set, M_w 5–6.5, for which the reliability of the STF amplitudes is questionable. Simple synthetic tests show that the observations are consistent with statistically indistinguishable growth of smaller and larger earthquakes. A much weaker trend is apparent among events of comparable duration, but we argue that its significance is not resolvable by the current data. Finally, we propose a nomenclature to facilitate further discussions of earthquake rupture predictability and determinism.

Additional Information

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Received 2020 December 4; in original form 2020 September 15; Published: 29 December 2020. This research was partially funded by U.S. Geological Survey Cooperative Agreement G19AC00296 and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Grant 5229 to Caltech. Data Availability: The STFs used in this study from Vallée et al. (2011) can be downloaded from http://scardec.projects.sismo.ipgp.fr/(last accessed in November 2020).

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Created:
August 22, 2023
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