Triggering of repeated earthquakes

Abstract

Based on the analysis of the world’s earthquakes with magnitudes M ≥ 6.5 for 1960–2013, it is shown that they cause global-scale coherent seismic oscillations which most distinctly manifest themselves in the period interval of 4–6 min during 1–3 days after the event. After these earthquakes, a repeated shock has an increased probability to occur in different seismically active regions located as far away as a few thousand km from the previous event, i.e., a remote interaction of seismic events takes place. The number of the repeated shocks N(t) decreases with time, which characterizes the memory of the lithosphere about the impact that has occurred. The time decay N(t) can be approximated by the linear, exponential, and powerlaw dependences. No distinct correlation between the spatial locations of the initial and repeated earthquakes is revealed. The probable triggering mechanisms of the remote interaction between the earthquakes are discussed. Surface seismic waves traveling several times around the Earth’s, coherent oscillations, and global source are the most preferable candidates. This may lead to the accumulation and coalescence of ruptures in the highly stressed or weakened domains of a seismically active region, which increases the probability of a repeated earthquake.