Abstract
We investigated the development of a distinct later phase observed at stations near the Japan Trench associated with shallow, outer-rise earthquakes off the coast of Sanriku, northern Japan based on the analysis of three-component broadband seismograms and FDM simulations of seismic wave propagation using a heterogeneous structural model of the Japan Trench subduction zone. Snapshots of seismic wave propagation obtained through these simulations clearly demonstrate the complicated seismic wavefield constructed by a coupling of the ocean acoustic waves and the Rayleigh waves propagating within seawater and below the sea bottom by multiple reflections associated with shallow subduction zone earthquakes. We demonstrated that the conversion to the Rayleigh wave from the coupled ocean acoustic waves and the Rayleigh wave as they propagate upward along the slope of seafloor near the coast is the primary cause of the arrival of the distinct later phase at the station near the coast. Through a sequence of simulations using different structural models of the Japan Trench subduction zone, we determined that the thick layer of seawater along the trench and the suddenly rising sea bottom onshore of the Japanese island are the major causes of the distinct later phase. The results of the present study indicate that for realistic modeling of seismic wave propagation from the subduction zone earthquakes, a high-resolution bathymetry model is very crucial, although most current simulations do not include a water column in their simulation models.
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Acknowledgments
We used the waveform record of the F-net broadband network operated by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED), Japan. We also acknowledge the NIED and Japan Oceanographic Data Center, Japan for providing subsurface structure and seafloor topography data, respectively. A part of numerical simulations presented in this study was performed by the Earth Simulator in the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. The present study was supported through the ‘Integrated Predictive Simulation System for Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster’ project of CREST, which is funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. We are grateful for kind management for our manuscript by John Rundle. We appreciate valuable comments from an anonymous reviewer for us to improve the manuscript.
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Noguchi, S., Maeda, T. & Furumura, T. FDM Simulation of an Anomalous Later Phase from the Japan Trench Subduction Zone Earthquakes. Pure Appl. Geophys. 170, 95–108 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-011-0412-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-011-0412-1