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We use continuous and campaign measurements from 215 GPS sites in northern Central America and southern Mexico to estimate coseismic and afterslip solutions for the 2009 M w = 7.3 Swan Islands fault strike-slip earthquake and the 2012 M w = 7.3 El Salvador and M w = 7.4 Guatemala thrust-faulting earthquakes on the Middle America trench. Our simultaneous, time-dependent inversion of more than 350 000 daily GPS site positions gives the first jointly consistent estimates of the coseismic slips for all three earthquakes, their combined time-dependent post-seismic effects and secular station velocities corrected for both the coseismic and post-seismic deformation. Our geodetic slip solutions for all three earthquakes agree with previous estimates that were derived via static coseismic-offset modelling. Our time-dependent model, which attributes all transient post-seismic deformation to earthquake afterslip, fits nearly all of the continuous GPS site position time-series within their severalmillimetre position noise. Afterslip moments for the three earthquakes range from 35 to 140 per cent of the geodetic coseismic moments, with the largest afterslip estimated for the 2012 El Salvador earthquake along the weakly coupled El Salvador trench segment. Forward modelling of viscoelastic deformation triggered by all three earthquakes for a range of assumed mantle and lower crustal viscosities suggests that it accounts for under 20 per cent of the observed post-seismic deformation and possibly under 10 per cent. Our results thus point to afterslip as the primary and perhaps dominant mode of post-seismic deformation for these

As the first large subduction thrust earthquake off the coast of western Guatemala in the past several decades, the 2012 November 7 M w = 7.4 earthquake offers the first opportunity to study coseismic and postseismic behaviour along a segment of the Middle America trench where frictional coupling makes a transition from weak coupling off the coast of El Salvador to strong coupling in southern Mexico. We use measurements at 19 continuous GPS sites in Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico to estimate the coseismic slip and postseismic deformation of the November 2012 Champerico (Guatemala) earthquake. An inversion of the coseismic offsets, which range up to ∼47 mm at the surface near the epicentre, indicates that up to ∼2 m of coseismic slip occurred on a ∼30 × 30 km rupture area between ∼10 and 30 km depth, which is near the global CMT centroid. The geodetic moment of 13 × 10 19 N m and corresponding magnitude of 7.4 both agree well with independent seismological estimates. Transient postseismic deformation that was recorded at 11 GPS sites is attributable to a combination of fault afterslip and viscoelastic flow in the lower crust and/or mantle. Modelling of the viscoelastic deformation suggests that it constituted no more than ∼30 per cent of the short-term postseismic deformation. GPS observations that extend six months after the earthquake are well fit by a model in which most afterslip occurred at the same depth or directly downdip from the rupture zone and released energy equivalent to no more than ∼20 per cent of the coseismic moment. An independent seismological slip solution that features more highly concentrated coseismic slip than our own fits the GPS offsets well if its slip centroid is translated ∼50 km to the west to a position close to our slip centroid. The geodetic and seismologic slip solutions thus suggest bounds of 2-7 m for the peak slip along a region of the interface no larger than 30 × 30 km.

The zone of interaction between the Cocos (CO), Caribbean (CA) and North America (NA) plates in Guatemala is defined by the sub-parallel Motagua and Polochic strike-slip faults, a series of north-south-trending extensional grabens immediately south of the Motagua Fault, the Middle America trench, and faults within the Middle America volcanic arc. Historical earthquakes associated with these faults include the destructive 1976 Mw 7.5 earthquake along the Motagua fault and the 2012 Mw 7.5 Champerico thrust earthquake. The latest published GPS-based present-day kinematic model of the region shows that about

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