We introduce a new scaling relation between earthquake magnitude (M) and a characteristic of initial P wave displacement. By examining Japanese K‐NET data averaged in bins partitioned by Mw and hypocentral distance, we demonstrate that the P wave displacement briefly displays similar growth at the onset of rupture and that the departure time (Tdp), which is defined as the time of departure from similarity of the absolute displacement after applying a band‐pass filter, correlates with the final M in a range of 4.5 ≤ Mw ≤ 7. The scaling relation between Mw and Tdp implies that useful information on the final M can be derived while the event is still in progress because Tdp occurs before the completion of rupture. We conclude that the scaling relation is important not only for earthquake early warning but also for the source physics of earthquakes.

We propose a new approach to improve the accuracy of the back-azimuth estimation in real-time by using a single station record. Compared with the conventional approach in which the length of the time window for the analysis is fixed for all data, the accuracy and speed of the estimation are drastically improved by introducing a variable-length time window which is determined by the first half cycle of the wavelength of the initial P-wave, because this window tends to reduce the influences of trailing scattered waves. The analysis, using the K-NET dataset, shows that the estimation, using this new approach, is improved by 28% and 0.25 s in accuracy and speed, respectively.

Masahiro

No abstract