Seismic source analysis of the destructive earthquake November 21, 2022, Mw 5.6 Cianjur (Indonesia) from relocated aftershock

Abstract

A destructive shallow earthquake with a magnitude of 5.6 struck Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia on November 21, 2022. This earthquake resulted in 602 casualties and the collapse of over 67,504 residences. The day after the mainshock, we deployed 19 temporary seismic stations to monitor aftershocks for a period of 30 days. We manually picked arrival times for 4499 P-waves and 3419 S-waves and determined locations for 514 events. Following the velocity model update, phase refinement through waveform cross correlation, and relocation using double-difference methods, we were able to determine 442 well-defined hypocenters of the aftershocks. We identified two clusters of aftershocks: one in the NNW-SSE direction, with a length of about 8 km, and another in the WSW-ENE direction, with a length of around 6 km. The seismogenic zone of these clusters ranges from a depth of 3 to 13 km. Our interpretation suggests that these clusters may indicate a conjugate fault. It is possible that the mainshock (Mw5.6) Cianjur earthquake on November 21, 2022 occurred on the WSW-ENE direction with sinistral movement.