The Largest Expected Earthquake Magnitudes in Japan: The Statistical Perspective

Abstract

Abstract Earthquake catalogs are probably the most informative data source about spatiotemporal seismicity evolution. The catalog quality in one of the most active seismogenic zones in the world, Japan, is excellent, although changes in quality arising, for example, from an evolving network are clearly present. Here, we seek the best estimate for the largest expected earthquake in a given future time interval from a combination of historic and instrumental earthquake catalogs. We extend the technique introduced by Zoller et al. (2013) to estimate the maximum magnitude in a time window of length T f for earthquake catalogs with varying level of completeness. In particular, we consider the case in which two types of catalogs are available: a historic catalog and an instrumental catalog. This leads to competing interests with respect to the estimation of the two parameters from the Gutenberg–Richter law, the b ‐value and the event rate λ above a given lower‐magnitude threshold (the a ‐value). The b ‐value is estimated most precisely from the frequently occurring small earthquakes; however, the tendency of small events to cluster in aftershocks, swarms, etc. violates the assumption of a Poisson process that is used for the estimation of λ . We suggest addressing conflict by estimating b solely from instrumental seismicity and using large magnitude events from historic catalogs for the earthquake rate estimation. Applying the method to Japan, there is a probability of about 20% that the maximum expected magnitude during any future time interval of length T f =30 years is m ≥9.0. Studies of different subregions in Japan indicates high probabilities for M 8 earthquakes along the Tohoku arc and relatively low probabilities in the Tokai, Tonankai, and Nankai region. Finally, for scenarios related to long‐time horizons and high‐confidence levels, the maximum expected magnitude will be around 10.