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Sources of shaking and flooding during the Tohoku-Oki earthquake: a mixture of rupture styles

Earth and Planetary Science Letters
By: , , , , and 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2012.04.006

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Abstract

Modeling strong ground motions from great subduction zone earthquakes is one of the great challenges of computational seismology. To separate the rupture characteristics from complexities caused by 3D sub-surface geology requires an extraordinary data set such as provided by the recent Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. Here we combine deterministic inversion and dynamically guided forward simulation methods to model over one thousand high-rate GPS and strong motion observations from 0 to 0.25 Hz across the entire Honshu Island. Our results display distinct styles of rupture with a deeper generic interplate event (~Mw8.5) transitioning to a shallow tsunamigenic earthquake (~Mw9.0) at about 25 km depth in a process driven by a strong dynamic weakening mechanism, possibly thermal pressurization. This source model predicts many important features of the broad set of seismic, geodetic and seafloor observations providing a major advance in our understanding of such great natural hazards.

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Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Sources of shaking and flooding during the Tohoku-Oki earthquake: a mixture of rupture styles
Series title Earth and Planetary Science Letters
DOI 10.1016/j.epsl.2012.04.006
Volume 333-334
Year Published 2012
Language English
Publisher Elsevier
Publisher location Amsterdam, Netherlands
Contributing office(s) Earthquake Science Center
Larger Work Type Article
Larger Work Subtype Journal Article
Larger Work Title Earth and Planetary Science Letters
First page 91
Last page 100
Country Japan
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