Abstract
—In this paper we relate the behavior of seismicity prior to a characteristic earthquake to the excitation in proximity to a spinodal instability. We illustrate the spinodal instability as the upper limit of superheated water prior to a steam explosion. We draw an analogy between the steam explosion and a characteristic earthquake, and show that the power-law activation associated with the spinodal instability is essentially identical to the power-law increase in Benioff strain observed prior to characteristic earthquakes. We find that theory and actual data give very similar results.
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Received October 13, 1999; revised January 25, 2000; accepted April 5, 2000
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Rundle, J., Klein, W., Turcotte, D. et al. Precursory Seismic Activation and Critical-point Phenomena. Pure appl. geophys. 157, 2165–2182 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00001079
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00001079