Comparison of force and moment tensor estimations of subevents during the 2022 Hunga–Tonga submarine volcanic eruption

Abstract

SUMMARYThe 2022 January 15 Hunga–Tonga submarine volcanic eruption was unprecedented in the modern era for its size, in terms of its plume height and atmospheric waves, including sound. Global seismic stations recorded maximal radiated energy during 30 min of the plume-forming phase of the eruption (04:00 to 04:30 UTC), with the largest subevents occurring over a 5-min interval starting at 04:15:17 UTC. Here, we consider two simple point-source models—force and moment tensor—and separately consider the single main subevent and the sequence of four subevents. Estimation of source models for the first subevent in the sequence is achieved with a complete search of model parameter space to find the global minimum of a waveform misfit function (body or surface waves). We performed 25 runs to explore the impact of depth, source model (force or moment tensor), wave type (body or surface), and component (vertical, radial, and transverse) on the waveform fits and estimated best-fitting source. Visualization of the misfit function reveals complex trade-offs among model parameters, highlighting the importance of characterizing uncertainties and parameter trade-offs. The four-subevent source model has up to 28 model parameters and requires an efficient search algorithm to find the best-fitting source. For this, we use the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy implemented on a high-performance computing cluster. The 10 four-subevent runs for each source model return sequences of subvertical downward forces and explosive-like moment tensors for each subevent. Our results show that these two simple source models provide comparable fits to regional and global seismic waveforms and that the source types for each subevent—either force direction or moment tensor source type on the eigenvalue lune—are similar enough to each other to consider that the subevents originate from the same process. Our estimation of the source mechanisms, sizes, and relative timing should benefit a physical interpretation of the eruption sequence.