Wenyuan Fan

Slip segmentation and slow rupture to the trench during the 2015, Mw8.3 Illapel, Chile earthquake

The 2015 Mw8.3 Illapel, Chile earthquake is the latest megathrust event on the central segment of that subduction zone. It generated strong ground motions and a large (up to 11 m runup) tsunami which prompted the evacuation of more than 1 million people in the first hours following the event. Observations during recent earthquakes suggest that these phenomena can be associated with rupture on different parts of the megathrust. The deep portion generates strong shaking while slow, large slip on the shallow fault is responsible for the tsunami. It is unclear whether all megathrusts can have shallow slip during coseismic rupture and what physical properties regulate this. Here we show that the Illapel event ruptured both deep and shallow segments with substantial slip. We resolve a kinematic slip model using regional geophysical observations and analyze it jointly with teleseismic backprojection. We find that the shallow and deep portions of the megathrust are segmented and have fundamentally different behavior. We forward calculate local tsunami propagation from the resolved slip and find good agreement with field measurements, independently validating the slip model. These results show that the central portion of the Chilean subduction zone has accumulated a significant shallow slip deficit and indicates that, given enough time, shallow slip might be possible everywhere along the subduction zone.

Dynamics of the 2015 M7.8 Nepal earthquake

The 2015 M7.8 Nepal earthquake ruptured part of the Main Himalayan Thrust beneath Kathmandu. To study the dynamics of this event, we compute P wave spectra of the main shock and of two large aftershocks to estimate stress drop and radiated energy. We find that surface reflections (depth phases) of these shallow earthquakes produce interference that severely biases spectral measurements unless corrections are applied. Measures of earthquake dynamics for the main shock are within the range of estimates from global and regional earthquakes. We explore the azimuthal and temporal variations of radiated energy and highlight unique aspects of the M7.8 rupture. The beginning of the earthquake likely experienced a dynamic weakening mechanism immediately followed by an abrupt change in fault geometry. Correlation of backprojection results with frequency-dependent variations in the radiated energy rate and with the suggested geometry of the Main Himalayan Thrust yields new constraints on dynamic ruptures through geometrical barriers.

The Earthquake‐Source Inversion Validation (SIV) Project

Finite-fault earthquake source inversions infer the (time-dependent) displacement on the rupture surface from geophysical data. The resulting earthquake source models document the complexity of the rupture process. However, multiple source models for the same earthquake, obtained by different research teams, often exhibit remarkable dissimilarities. To address the uncertainties in earthquake-source inversion methods and to understand strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches used, the Source Inversion Validation (SIV) project conducts a set of forward-modeling exercises and inversion benchmarks. In this article, we describe the SIV strategy, the initial benchmarks, and current SIV results. Furthermore, we apply statistical tools for quantitative waveform comparison and for investigating source-model (dis)similarities that enable us to rank the solutions, and to identify particularly promising source inversion approaches. All SIV exercises (with related data and descriptions) and statistical comparison tools are available via an online collaboration platform, and we encourage source modelers to use the SIV benchmarks for developing and testing new methods. We envision that the SIV efforts will lead to new developments for tackling the earthquake-source imaging problem.

Local near instantaneously dynamically triggered aftershocks of large earthquakes

Aftershocks are often triggered by static- and/or dynamic-stress changes caused by mainshocks. The relative importance of the two triggering mechanisms is controversial at near-to-intermediate distances. We detected and located 48 previously unidentified large early aftershocks triggered by earthquakes with magnitudes between ≥7 and 8 within a few fault lengths (approximately 300 kilometers), during times that high-amplitude surface waves arrive from the mainshock (less than 200 seconds). The observations indicate that near-to-intermediate-field dynamic triggering commonly exists and fundamentally promotes aftershock occurrence. The mainshocks and their nearby early aftershocks are located at major subduction zones and continental boundaries, and mainshocks with all types of faulting-mechanisms (normal, reverse, and strike-slip) can trigger early aftershocks.

Coherent Seismic Arrivals in the P Wave Coda of the 2012 Mw 7.2 Sumatra Earthquake: Water Reverberations or an Early Aftershock?: 10 JAN 2012 SUMATRA EARTHQUAKE

Teleseismic records of the 2012 Mw 7.2 Sumatra earthquake contain prominent phases in the P wave train, arriving about 50 to 100 s after the direct P arrival. Azimuthal variations in these arrivals, together with back-projection analysis, led Fan and Shearer (2016a, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL067785) to conclude that they originated from early aftershock(s), located ∼150 km northeast of the mainshock and landward of the trench. However, recently, Yue et al. (2017, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL073254) argued that the anomalous arrivals are more likely water reverberations from the mainshock, based mostly on empirical Green’s function analysis of a M6 earthquake near the mainshock and a water phase synthetic test. Here we present detailed back-projection and waveform analyses of three M6 earthquakes within 100 km of the Mw 7.2 earthquake, including the empirical Green’s function event analyzed in Yue et al. (2017, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL073254). In addition, we examine the waveforms of three M5.5 reverse-faulting earthquakes close to the inferred early aftershock location in Fan and Shearer (2016a, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL067785). These results suggest that the reverberatory character of the anomalous arrivals in the mainshock coda is consistent with water reverberations, but the origin of this energy is more likely an early aftershock rather than delayed and displaced water reverberations from the mainshock.