Abstract
Sea level data are used to show that 5 to 8 cm of aseismic uplift accumulated in a few months before the Long Beach, Hyuganada, and Peru earthquakes. This uplift rate is an order of magnitude faster than tectonic loading rates. Alternative mechanisms to explain this observation are anelastic creep at depth or dilatancy in a jointed crust. The energy expended during uplift is larger than the seismically radiated energy by approximately a factor of ten.