Spatiotemporal Patterns in the Energy Release of Great Earthquakes
- 25 June 1993
- journal article
- other
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 260 (5116), 1923-1926
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.260.5116.1923
Abstract
For the past 80 years, the energy released in great strike-slip and thrust earthquakes has occurred in alternating cycles of 20 to 30 years. This pattern suggests that a global transfer mechanism from poloidal to toroidal components of tectonic plate motions is operating on time scales of several decades. The increase in seismic activity in California in recent years may be related to an acceleration of global strike-slip moment release, as regions of shear deformation mature after being reached by stresses that have propagated away from regions of great subduction decoupling earthquakes in the 1960s.Keywords
This publication has 20 references indexed in Scilit:
- Strike‐slip earthquakes on quasi‐vertical transcurrent faults: Inferences for general scaling relationsGeophysical Research Letters, 1992
- Centroid-moment tensor solutions for October–December 1989Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 1990
- Reevaluation of the Chandler wobble seismic excitation from recent dataEarth and Planetary Science Letters, 1985
- Excitation of the Chandler wobble by large earthquakesNature, 1976
- Accelerated Plate TectonicsScience, 1975
- Reliable estimation of the seismic moment of large earthquakes.Journal of Physics of the Earth, 1975
- Earthquakes and the Rotation of the EarthScience, 1974
- Active periods in the world's chief seismic beltsTectonophysics, 1974
- Stress Diffusion from Plate BoundariesNature, 1973
- Sequential Occurrences of Recent Great EarthquakesJournal of Physics of the Earth, 1968