Rupture process of the 2016 Wharton Basin strike‐slip faulting earthquake estimated from joint inversion of teleseismic and tsunami waveforms

Abstract

AbstractThe 2016 Wharton Basin strike‐slip faulting earthquake generated a small tsunami that was clearly recorded at deep ocean stations. Teleseismic inversions were made on four different nodal planes suggested by Global Centroid Moment Tensor and W‐phase solutions. Tsunami waveforms computed for the north‐south striking westward dipping plane were most similar to the observations. With this fault plane, joint inversions of teleseismic and tsunami waveforms were used to estimate the kinematic rupture process. The weights of teleseismic and tsunami waveforms were found to make both data sets equally contribute to the solution. Misfit analysis of both data sets favored a rupture model with rupture front speed of 2.0 km/s. The seismic moment was estimated to be 7.69 × 1020 Nm (Mw 7.9), most of it was released within 30 s and it peaked at 15 s. Subfaults with slip larger than 5 m were located from near surface to 30 km depth.