Multi-Scale Rupture Growth With Alternating Directions in a Complex Fault Network During the 2023 South-Eastern Türkiye and Syria Earthquake Doublet

Ryo Okuwaki; Yuji Yagi; Tuncay Taymaz; Stephen P. Hicks

doi:10.1029/2023GL103480

Multi-Scale Rupture Growth With Alternating Directions in a Complex Fault Network During the 2023 South-Eastern Türkiye and Syria Earthquake Doublet

Ryo Okuwaki^*, Yuji Yagi, Tuncay Taymaz, Stephen P. Hicks

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Geophysical Engineering

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

45 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A devastating doublet of earthquakes with moment magnitude M_W 7.9 and M_W 7.6 earthquakes contiguously occurred in SE Türkiye near the NW border of Syria. Here we perform a potency-density tensor inversion to simultaneously estimate rupture evolution and fault geometry for the doublet. We find the initial M_W 7.9 earthquake involved discrete episodes of supershear rupture and back-rupture propagation, and was triggered by initial rupture along a bifurcated splay of the East Anatolian Fault. The second M_W 7.6 event was triggered by the earlier M_W 7.9 event, and it involved more extensive supershear rupture along a favorably curved fault, and was likely stopped by geometric barriers at the fault ends. Our results highlight the multi-scale cascading rupture growth across the complex fault network that affects the diverse rupture geometries of the 2023 Türkiye earthquake doublet, contributing to the strong ground shaking and associated devastation.

Original language	English
Article number	e2023GL103480
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	50
Issue number	12
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103480
Publication status	Published - 28 Jun 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Authors.

Funding

We thank the editor Germán Prieto and the reviewer Erdinc Saygin and the anonymous reviewer for their thorough evaluations and providing constructive comments and suggestions. We also thank Ahmed Ettaf Elbanna, František Gallovič, and Jiří Zahradník for fruitful discussion. 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. 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. We appreciate the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency of Türkiye (AFAD) for providing an initial catalogue of aftershocks and phase‐arrival data acquired from their bulletin resources. This work was supported by JSPS Grant‐in‐Aid for Scientific Research (C) 19K04030 and 22K03751, JSPS Early‐Career Scientists 20K14570, and JSPS Grant‐in‐Aid for Special Purposes 22K21372. The authors declare no conflicts of interest relevant to this study.

Funders	Funder number
National Science Foundation	EAR‐1851048
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science	22K21372, 20K14570, 19K04030, 22K03751

Keywords

complex fault geometry
earthquake
inversion
rupture process
teleseismic waves
triggering

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1029/2023GL103480

Cite this

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abstract = "A devastating doublet of earthquakes with moment magnitude MW 7.9 and MW 7.6 earthquakes contiguously occurred in SE T{\"u}rkiye near the NW border of Syria. Here we perform a potency-density tensor inversion to simultaneously estimate rupture evolution and fault geometry for the doublet. We find the initial MW 7.9 earthquake involved discrete episodes of supershear rupture and back-rupture propagation, and was triggered by initial rupture along a bifurcated splay of the East Anatolian Fault. The second MW 7.6 event was triggered by the earlier MW 7.9 event, and it involved more extensive supershear rupture along a favorably curved fault, and was likely stopped by geometric barriers at the fault ends. Our results highlight the multi-scale cascading rupture growth across the complex fault network that affects the diverse rupture geometries of the 2023 T{\"u}rkiye earthquake doublet, contributing to the strong ground shaking and associated devastation.",

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Multi-Scale Rupture Growth With Alternating Directions in a Complex Fault Network During the 2023 South-Eastern Türkiye and Syria Earthquake Doublet

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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