Real-time discrimination of earthquake foreshocks and aftershocks

Gulia, Laura; Wiemer, Stefan

doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1606-4

Cited by 220 publications

(188 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Therefore, to decide whether or not a particular mainshock exhibits significant foreshock activity, visual inspection of the catalog is recommended, rather than to rely purely on the computed

p

values. Alternatively, other seismological metrics such as a changing Gutenberg‐Richter

b

value could be considered to alleviate the limitations of a fixed temporal window (Gulia & Wiemer, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Statistical Significance of Foreshock Sequences in Southern California

Ende

Ampuero

2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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Earthquake foreshocks may provide information that is critical to short‐term earthquake forecasting. However, foreshocks are far from ubiquitously observed, which makes the interpretation of ongoing seismic sequences problematic. Based on a statistical analysis, Trugman and Ross (2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL083725) suggested that as much as 72% of all mainshocks in Southern California is preceded by foreshock sequences. In this study, we reassess the analysis of Trugman and Ross (2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL083725), and we evaluate the impact of the assumptions made by these authors. Using an alternative statistical approach, we find that only 15 out of 46 mainshocks (33%) are preceded by significantly elevated seismicity rates. When accounting for temporal fluctuations in the background seismicity, only 18% of the analyzed foreshock sequences remain unexplained by the background seismicity. These results imply that even in a highly complete earthquake catalog, the majority of earthquakes do not exhibit detectable foreshock sequences.

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“…Therefore, to decide whether or not a particular mainshock exhibits significant foreshock activity, visual inspection of the catalog is recommended, rather than to rely purely on the computed

p

values. Alternatively, other seismological metrics such as a changing Gutenberg‐Richter

b

value could be considered to alleviate the limitations of a fixed temporal window (Gulia & Wiemer, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Statistical Significance of Foreshock Sequences in Southern California

Ende

Ampuero

2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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“…More simply, after a big earthquake, is it possible to determine whether an even larger one is coming? On page 193, Gulia and Wiemer 3 propose an answer to this question. They suggest that, by continuously measuring the relative numbers of large and small earthquakes, comparatively safe aftershock sequences can be distinguished from those that will get bigger.…”

Section: E M I Ly E B R O D S K Ymentioning

confidence: 99%

Determining whether the worst earthquake has passed

Brodsky

2019

Nature

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“…Therefore, to decide whether or not a particular mainshock exhibits significant foreshock activity, visual inspection of the catalog is recommended, rather than to rely purely on the computed p values. Alternatively, other seismological metrics such as a changing Gutenberg-Richter b value could be considered to alleviate the limitations of a fixed temporal window (Gulia & Wiemer, 2019).…”

Section: Statistical Significance Of Foreshock Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

On the statistical significance of foreshock sequences in Southern California

Ende¹,

Ampuero²

2019

Preprint

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Earthquake foreshocks may provide information that is critical to short-term earthquake forecasting. However, foreshocks are far from ubiquitously observed, which makes the interpretation of ongoing seismic sequences problematic. Based on a statistical analysis, Trugman and Ross (2019, https:// doi.org/10.1029/2019GL083725) suggested that as much as 72% of all mainshocks in Southern California is preceded by foreshock sequences. In this study, we reassess the analysis of Trugman and Ross (2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL083725), and we evaluate the impact of the assumptions made by these authors. Using an alternative statistical approach, we find that only 15 out of 46 mainshocks (33%) are preceded by significantly elevated seismicity rates. When accounting for temporal fluctuations in the background seismicity, only 18% of the analyzed foreshock sequences remain unexplained by the background seismicity. These results imply that even in a highly complete earthquake catalog, the majority of earthquakes do not exhibit detectable foreshock sequences.substantially less than that reported by T&R (20-30% versus 70%, respectively). Only about half of these foreshock sequences can be explained by random fluctuations in the background seismicity rate, which suggests that in some cases elevated seismicity rates are uniquely associated with periods preceding mainshocks. Geophysical Research Letters 10.1029/2019GL086224seismicity rates, while about half of that fraction is a priori anticipated based on the ubiquitous fluctuations in the background seismicity rate. In other words, we expect that only about 15% of all mainshocks exhibit a foreshock sequence uniquely associated with the earthquake preparation process.

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Real-time discrimination of earthquake foreshocks and aftershocks

Cited by 220 publications

References 43 publications

On the Statistical Significance of Foreshock Sequences in Southern California

On the Statistical Significance of Foreshock Sequences in Southern California

Determining whether the worst earthquake has passed

On the statistical significance of foreshock sequences in Southern California

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