Partial Ruptures Cannot Explain the Long Recurrence Intervals of Repeating Earthquakes
Name
JGR Solid Earth - 2024 - Turner - Partial Ruptures Cannot Explain the Long Recurrence Intervals of Repeating Earthquakes.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.13 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
ba80cc93dbc879fe097ddd517625843e
Author(s)
Turner, AR
Hawthorne, JC
Cattania, C
Date Issued
January 22, 2024
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Citation
Turner, A. R., Hawthorne, J. C., & Cattania, C. (2024). Partial ruptures cannot explain the long recurrence intervals of repeating earthquakes. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 129, e2023JB027870.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Repeating earthquakes repeatedly rupture the same fault asperities, which are likely loaded to failure by surrounding aseismic slip. However, repeaters occur less often than would be expected if these earthquakes accommodate all of the long‐term slip on the asperities. Here, we assess a possible explanation for this slip discrepancy: partial ruptures. On asperities that are much larger than the nucleation radius, a fraction of the slip could be accommodated by smaller ruptures on the same asperities. We search for partial ruptures of repeating earthquakes in Parkfield using the Northern California earthquakes catalog. We find 3991 individual repeaters which have 4468 partial ruptures. The presence of partial ruptures suggests that the asperities of repeating earthquakes are much larger than the nucleation radius. However, we find that partial ruptures could accommodate only around 25% of the slip on repeating earthquake patches. A 25% increase in the slip budget can explain only a small portion of the long recurrence intervals of repeating earthquakes.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
10.1029/2023jb027870
