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

Shengji Wei; Robert Graves; Don Helmberger; Jean Philippe Avouac; Junle Jiang

doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2012.04.006

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

Shengji Wei
, Robert Graves
, Don Helmberger
, Jean Philippe Avouac
, Junle Jiang

School of Geog & Environmental Scs

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

151 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	91-100
Number of pages	10
Journal	Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Volume	333-334
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2012.04.006
Publication status	Published (in print/issue) - 1 Jun 2012

Funding

This research was supported by NSF Grant EAR-1142020 and USGS Award G10AP00048 . Shengji Wei is supported in part under USGS Cooperative Agreement G09AC00150 . Some of the large-scale 3D finite difference simulations were run at the University of Southern California's Center for High Performance Computing and Communications ( http://www.usc.edu/hpcc ) under an agreement with the SCEC Community Modeling Environment project. The high-rate GPS data, generously made available by C. Rocken of GPS Solutions, Inc. originated with efforts by GSI, NGDS, Hitz, GPSS and VERIPOS. Processed GPS time series are provided through the Caltech ARIA project. Strong motion waveforms were obtained from K-Net and KiK-Net of NIED. The Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) were used for creating the figures. We thank Morgan Page and Kenneth Hudnut for their comments.

Keywords

Finite fault
High-rate GPS
Strong motion
Tohoku-Oki earthquake
Tsunami

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10.1016/j.epsl.2012.04.006

Cite this

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title = "Sources of shaking and flooding during the Tohoku-Oki earthquake: A mixture of rupture styles",

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 (\textasciitilde{}Mw8.5) transitioning to a shallow tsunamigenic earthquake (\textasciitilde{}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.",

keywords = "Finite fault, High-rate GPS, Strong motion, Tohoku-Oki earthquake, Tsunami",

author = "Shengji Wei and Robert Graves and Don Helmberger and Avouac, \{Jean Philippe\} and Junle Jiang",

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doi = "10.1016/j.epsl.2012.04.006",

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T1 - Sources of shaking and flooding during the Tohoku-Oki earthquake

T2 - A mixture of rupture styles

AU - Wei, Shengji

AU - Graves, Robert

AU - Helmberger, Don

AU - Avouac, Jean Philippe

AU - Jiang, Junle

PY - 2012/6/1

Y1 - 2012/6/1

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Finite fault

KW - High-rate GPS

KW - Strong motion

KW - Tohoku-Oki earthquake

KW - Tsunami

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84861155562

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SN - 0012-821X

VL - 333-334

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EP - 100

JO - Earth and Planetary Science Letters

JF - Earth and Planetary Science Letters

ER -

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

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Keywords

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