Complex multi-fault rupture and triggering during the 2023 earthquake doublet in southeastern Türkiye

Chengli Liu; Thorne Lay; Rongjiang Wang; Tuncay Taymaz; Zujun Xie; Xiong Xiong; Tahir Serkan Irmak; Metin Kahraman; Ceyhun Erman

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-41404-5

Complex multi-fault rupture and triggering during the 2023 earthquake doublet in southeastern Türkiye

Chengli Liu^*, Thorne Lay, Rongjiang Wang, Tuncay Taymaz, Zujun Xie, Xiong Xiong, Tahir Serkan Irmak, Metin Kahraman, Ceyhun Erman

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Geophysical Engineering

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

73 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Two major earthquakes (M_W 7.8 and M_W 7.7) ruptured left-lateral strike-slip faults of the East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ) on February 6, 2023, causing >59,000 fatalities and ~$119B in damage in southeastern Türkiye and northwestern Syria. Here we derived kinematic rupture models for the two events by inverting extensive seismic and geodetic observations using complex 5-6 segment fault models constrained by satellite observations and relocated aftershocks. The larger event nucleated on a splay fault, and then propagated bilaterally ~350 km along the main EAFZ strand. The rupture speed varied from 2.5-4.5 km/s, and peak slip was ~8.1 m. 9-h later, the second event ruptured ~160 km along the curved northern EAFZ strand, with early bilateral supershear rupture velocity (>4 km/s) followed by a slower rupture speed (~3 km/s). Coulomb Failure stress increase imparted by the first event indicates plausible triggering of the doublet aftershock, along with loading of neighboring faults.

Original language	English
Article number	5564
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	14
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41404-5
Publication status	Published - Dec 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, Springer Nature Limited.

Funding

The authors thank Prof. Chen Ji at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for helpful discussions. The authors thank Prof. P. Martin Mai, Dr. Jihong Liu, and Prof. Sigurjón Jónsson at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology for sharing horizontal displacements derived from pixel-tracking offsets of Sentinel-1 satellite radar images. The authors also thank Jianbao Sun and Zhaoyang Zhang at Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration for sharing geodetic observatons of the 2023 Türkiye earthquake doublet. C. Liu was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (No. 42222403, 42230309). T. Lay’s earthquake research is supported by US National Science Foundation (Grant EAR1802364). Tuncay Taymaz acknowledges the Istanbul Technical University Research Fund (ITU-BAP) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship Award for providing computing facilities through the Humboldt-Stiftung Follow-Up Program to support his earthquake research. The authors thank Prof. Chen Ji at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for helpful discussions. The authors thank Prof. P. Martin Mai, Dr. Jihong Liu, and Prof. Sigurjón Jónsson at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology for sharing horizontal displacements derived from pixel-tracking offsets of Sentinel-1 satellite radar images. The authors also thank Jianbao Sun and Zhaoyang Zhang at Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration for sharing geodetic observatons of the 2023 Türkiye earthquake doublet. C. Liu was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (No. 42222403, 42230309). T. Lay’s earthquake research is supported by US National Science Foundation (Grant EAR1802364). Tuncay Taymaz acknowledges the Istanbul Technical University Research Fund (ITU-BAP) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship Award for providing computing facilities through the Humboldt-Stiftung Follow-Up Program to support his earthquake research. The facilities of IRIS Data Services, and specifically the IRIS Data Management Center, were used for access to waveforms, related metadata, and/or derived products used in this study. All teleseismic body wave records can be obtained from the Federation of Digital Seismic Networks (FDSN: https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/IU , https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/II , https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/CN , https://doi.org/10.18715/GEOSCOPE.G , https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/CU , https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/IC , https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/AV , https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/AK , https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/TA ), and accessed through the IRIS data management center ( http://ds.iris.edu/wilber3/find_stations/11448043 ). IRIS Data Services are funded through the Seismological Facilities for the Advancement of Geoscience (SAGE) Award of the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Support Agreement EAR-1851048. The strong-motion data can be obtained from https://tdvms.afad.gov.tr/continuous_data , and the raw GNSS data are from https://www.tusaga-aktif.gov.tr/ . The coseismic offset measurements of GNSS for the 2023 Türkiye earthquake doublet are available from http://geodesy.unr.edu/ ( http://geodesy.unr.edu/news_items/20230213/us6000jllz_final5min.txt ; http://geodesy.unr.edu/news_items/20230213/us6000jlqa_final5min.txt ). Broadband radiated energy at teleseismic distances is available from the EQEnergy application of the IRIS ( https://ds.iris.edu/ds/products/eqenergy/ ). The slip models of the 2023 Türkiye earthquake doublet generated in this study can be obtained at Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/record/8232064 .

Funders	Funder number
National Science Foundation	EAR-1851048, EAR1802364
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
University of California, Santa Barbara
National Natural Science Foundation of China	42230309, 42222403
Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi
Bilimsel Araştırma Projeleri Birimi, İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi

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abstract = "Two major earthquakes (MW 7.8 and MW 7.7) ruptured left-lateral strike-slip faults of the East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ) on February 6, 2023, causing >59,000 fatalities and ~$119B in damage in southeastern T{\"u}rkiye and northwestern Syria. Here we derived kinematic rupture models for the two events by inverting extensive seismic and geodetic observations using complex 5-6 segment fault models constrained by satellite observations and relocated aftershocks. The larger event nucleated on a splay fault, and then propagated bilaterally ~350 km along the main EAFZ strand. The rupture speed varied from 2.5-4.5 km/s, and peak slip was ~8.1 m. 9-h later, the second event ruptured ~160 km along the curved northern EAFZ strand, with early bilateral supershear rupture velocity (>4 km/s) followed by a slower rupture speed (~3 km/s). Coulomb Failure stress increase imparted by the first event indicates plausible triggering of the doublet aftershock, along with loading of neighboring faults.",

author = "Chengli Liu and Thorne Lay and Rongjiang Wang and Tuncay Taymaz and Zujun Xie and Xiong Xiong and Irmak, {Tahir Serkan} and Metin Kahraman and Ceyhun Erman",

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AU - Xie, Zujun

AU - Xiong, Xiong

AU - Irmak, Tahir Serkan

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Complex multi-fault rupture and triggering during the 2023 earthquake doublet in southeastern Türkiye

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