Co-seismic change in ocean bottom topography: Implication to absolute global mean sea level change

Abstract

Earthquakes perturb both the ocean bottom topography due to displacements of sea floor and the geoid due to mass redistribution, which induces the relative sea level (RSL) change. However, the relative global mean sea level (GMSL) change is zero in that sea water mass is conserved. But the absolute GMSL change is not zero because earthquakes displace total ocean mass with respect to the Earth's center of mass (CM) which remains unchanged after an earthquake. This displacement, i.e. the absolute GMSL change, may be detectable by altimetry since the satellites are orbiting around CM. In this paper, we proposed a method to estimate co-seismic absolute GMSL change caused by earthquakes based on the point dislocation theory for a spherically symmetric, non-rotating, elastic and isotropic (SNREI) Earth. This change can be directly connected to the perturbation of ocean bottom topography. We first computed co-seismic displacements as well as the change in geo-potential and solved the sea level equation to validate the insignificance of the oceans' feedback, i.e. the loading effect due to RSL change, to co-seismic displacements. The results imply that the loading effect due to RSL change is negligible on displacements while is considerable on geoid. We then computed the absolute GMSL change caused by co-seismic vertical and horizontal displacements by making use of the integrated Green's function method. The numerical results show that a large earthquake may raise the absolute GMSL by magnitude of sub-millimeter and the recent three large events cause GMSL to rise about one millimeter, in which the contribution from horizontal displacement is non-negligible.