Seismic moment of great deep shocks

Abstract

The long-period Rayleigh waves were investigated for the largest four deep shocks in 1963–1973 to determine the seismic moment by the same technique as used for shallow earthquakes. The results could be used for a quantitative comparison of source parameters between shallow and deep events. Three of the four shocks occurred beneath the South American continent (the Colombia earthquake, 1970; the western Brazil earthquake, 1963; the Peru—Bolivia border earthquake, 1963) and the other beneath the Japan Sea (1973). The focal depths are 653, 576, 593 and 575 km, respectively. The largest value of seismic moment was obtained as 2.1 · 10 28 dyncm for the Colombia earthquake. This value is still about forty times smaller than that for the great Alaskan earthquake. A slight inconsistency was found between the first-motion diagram and the Rayleigh wave radiation pattern for the Colombia earthquake and the Peru—Bolivia border earthquake.