Slip distribution of the 2014 Iquique earthquake in northern Chile derived from tsunami waveform inversion

Abstract:

A major earthquake occurred on the plate boundary between the Nazca plate and the South American plate on April 1, 2014 in northern Chile associated with a tsunami that was recorded at the offshore DART buoys and the coastal tide gauges. The epicenter was located in a seismic gap called “Iquique gap”, but the moment magnitude was estimated to be 8.2 from the seismic wave analysis which was much smaller than the size of seismic gap. It is important to reveal the slip distribution of this earthquake in order to assess remaining tsunami risk in the region. We therefore carried out a tsunami inversion analysis for this earthquake. We used tsunami waveform data recorded at both of the offshore and coastal gauges, and 30 arc-sec interval bathymetric grid complied by the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service of the Chilean Navy. We also examined effect of tsunami governing equations used in creating Green’s functions. One solution was obtained with the linear long-wave equations; the other was obtained with the linear dispersive equations. The effect of dispersive equations was found in tsunami waveforms in the open ocean. But that was not apparent in near-field records and the estimated slip distribution itself. The observed tsunami waveforms were retrieved well in the analysis except at Tocopilla where a large delay of tsunami arrival of about 10 minutes was seen in the observed data. Features of the estimated slip are 1) the slip extent was approximately 120km x 80km, 2) the major slip area was located to the south of the epicenter, a region off between Pisagua and Iquique, 3) the maximum slip was about 5m, 4) the seismic moment was calculated to be 1.28x10^21Nm (Mw 8.0).