ALBERT

Description: Previous formalisms for determining the static perturbation of spherically symmetric self-gravitating elastic Earth models due to displacement dislocations deal with each infinitesimal element of the fault system in its epicentral reference frame. In this work, we overcome this restriction and present novel and compact formulas for obtaining the perturbation due to the whole fault system in an arbitrary and common reference frame. Furthermore, we show that, even in an arbitrary reference frame, it is still possible to discriminate the contributions associated with the polar, bipolar and quadrupolar patterns of the seismic source response, as well as their relation with the along strike, along dip and tensile components of the displacement dislocation. These results allow a better understanding of the relation between the static perturbation and the whole fault system, and find direct applications in geodetic problems, like the modelling of long-wavelength geoid or gravity data from GRACE and GOCE space missions and of the perturbation of the deviatoric inertia tensor of the Earth.

Description: We challenge the perspective that seismicity could contribute to polar motion by arguing quantitatively that, in first approximation and on the average, interseismic deformations can compensate for it. This point is important because what we must simulate and observe in Earth Orientation Parameter time-series over intermediate timescales of decades or centuries is the residual polar motion resulting from the two opposing processes of coseismic and interseismic deformations. In this framework, we first simulate the polar motion caused by only coseismic deformations during the longest period available of instrumental seismicity, from 1900 to present, using both the CMT and ISC-GEM catalogues. The instrumental seismicity covering a little longer than one century does not represent yet the average seismicity that we should expect on the long term. Indeed, although the simulation shows a tendency to move the Earth rotation pole towards 133°E at the average rate of 16.5 mm yr –1 , this trend is still sensitive to individual megathrust earthquakes, particularly to the 1960 Chile and 1964 Alaska earthquakes. In order to further investigate this issue, we develop a global seismicity model (GSM) that is independent from any earthquake catalogue and that describes the average seismicity along plate boundaries on the long term by combining information about present-day plate kinematics with the Anderson theory of faulting, the seismic moment conservation principle and a few other assumptions. Within this framework, we obtain a secular polar motion of 8 mm yr –1 towards 112.5°E that is comparable with that estimated from 1900 to present using the earthquake catalogues, although smaller by a factor of 2 in amplitude and different by 20° in direction. Afterwards, in order to reconcile the idea of a secular polar motion caused by earthquakes with our simplest understanding of the seismic cycle, we adapt the GSM in order to account for interseismic deformations and we use it to quantify, for the first time ever, their contribution to polar motion. Taken together, coseismic and interseismic deformations make the rotation pole wander around the north pole with maximum polar excursions of about 1 m. In particular, the rotation pole moves towards about Newfoundland when the interseismic contribution dominates over the coseismic ones (i.e. during phases of low seismicity or, equivalently, when most of the fault system associated with plate boundaries is locked). When megathrust earthquakes occur, instead, the rotation pole is suddenly shifted in an almost opposite direction, towards about 133°E.

Description: In the literature, the inverted coseismic slip models from seismological and geodetic data for the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake portray significant discrepancies, in particular regarding the intensity and the distribution of the rupture near the trench. For a megathrust earthquake, it is difficult to discern the slip along the shallow part of the fault from the geodetic data, which are often acquired on land. In this paper, we discuss the uncertainties in the slip distribution inversion using the geodetic data for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the Fully Bayesian Inversion method. These uncertainties are due to the prior information regarding the boundary conditions at the edges of the fault, the dip subduction angle and the smoothing operator. Using continuous GPS data from the Japan Island, the results for the rigid and free boundary conditions show that they produce remarkably different slip distributions at shallow depths, with the latter producing a large slip exceeding 30 m near the surface. These results indicate that the smoothing operator (gradient or Laplacian schemes) does not severely affect the slip pattern. To better invert the coseismic slip, we then introduce the ocean bottom GPS (OB-GPS) data, which improve the resolution of the shallow part of the fault. We obtain a near-trench slip greater than 40 m that reaches the Earth's surface, regardless of which boundary condition is used. Additionally, we show that using a mean dip angle for the fault as derived from subduction models is adequate if the goal is to invert for the general features of the slip pattern of this megathrust event.

Description: In a lithosphere where dislocation creep dominates the steady-state flow and the viscosity is stress-dependent, the equilibrium between tectonic stress and strain rate is broken after an earthquake due to the sudden coseismic stress change. The imbalance between tectonic stress and strain rate manifests itself during the post-seismic phase and, when seismic stress is comparable or smaller than tectonic stress, it affects post-seismic deformation via an effective anisotropy along the principal axes of the tectonic stress tensor. This issue is herein discussed within the framework of post-seismic models based on power-law Maxwell rheologies and, in the limit case of seismic stress much smaller than tectonic stress, we obtain a first-order approximation of the rheology which results into a linear anisotropic Maxwell model and we find that the effective anisotropy is associated to a two-modal relaxation characterized by the Maxwell time and the Maxwell time divided by the power-law index. Thus, as far as the steady-state flow within the lithosphere is dominated by dislocation creep, linear isotropic viscoelastic rheologies, like Newtonian Maxwell and Burgers models, represent a severe oversimplification which does not account for the physics of post-seismic deformation. This new physics is discussed characterizing the stress state of the ductile layers of the lithosphere before and after the earthquake for normal, inverse and strike mechanisms and for a variety of continental seismogenic zones and thermal models. We show that the first-order approximation of the power-law Maxwell rheology is valid for a quite wide range of small and moderate earthquakes. The most restrictive upper bounds of the seismic magnitude (which hold for the hottest thermal model here considered, with lithospheric thickness of H  = 80 km and surface heat flux of Q  = 70 mW m –2 ) occur for normal and inverse earthquakes and are 5.6 or 6.3 for a lower crust of wet diorite or felsic granulite, and 6.5 for a mantle of wet olivine. The upper bounds increase by about 0.3–0.4 for strike earthquakes and by more than 1.0 for the cold thermal model ( H  = 200 km and Q  = 50 mW m –2 ).

Description: The problem of compressibility in modelling of viscoelastic deformations of planetary bodies is still a topic under discussion. Studies facing this topic discuss the error when considering a stratification of layers with constant material parameters. But homogeneous compressible layers imply that the initial state is not stable. So, any perturbation method applied to this type of state results in an ill-posed problem, evident in a denumerable infinite set of modes in the spectral representation of the solution. Based on the analytic solution of Cambiotti and Sabadini, we discuss any violation from the stable Adams–Williamson condition to result in unphysical behaviour where we concentrate here on the consequences for the horizontal displacement and deformation within the mantle due to surface loading. This focus motivates to revisit the Longman paradox, which discusses the boundary conditions for a compressible fluid core.

Description: 〈span〉〈div〉SUMMARY〈/div〉Satellite-derived gravity data offer a novel perspective for understanding the physics of megathrust earthquakes at subduction zones. Nonetheless, their temporal resolution and observational errors make it difficult to discern the different phases of the seismic cycle, as the elastostatic deformation (co-seismic) and the stress relaxation by viscous flow (post-seismic). To overcome these difficulties and to take advantage of the physical constraints on the temporal evolution and on the spatial pattern of the earthquake-induced gravity disturbances, we have jointly estimated the fault slip of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and the rheological stratification by means of a Bayesian inversion of GRACE data time series and within the framework of spherically symmetric self-gravitating compressible viscoelastic Earth models. This approach, in addition to improve the exploitation of satellite-derived gravity data, allows us (i) to constrain the fault slip taking advantage of information from both the co- and post-seismic signatures and (ii) to investigate the trade-off between the fault slip and the shallow rheological stratification. In this respect, it can be used to improve the modelling of crustal displacements from GPS data, even if their higher accuracy and temporal resolution allow to discriminate well the co-seismic signature from the others.〈/span〉