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On the earthquake predictability of fault interaction models
Author(s) -
Marzocchi W.,
Melini D.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2014gl061718
Subject(s) - predictability , seismology , foreshock , earthquake simulation , remotely triggered earthquakes , randomness , earthquake prediction , geology , coulomb , fault (geology) , seismic gap , interplate earthquake , physics , aftershock , mathematics , statistics , quantum mechanics , electron
Space‐time clustering is the most striking departure of large earthquakes occurrence process from randomness. These clusters are usually described ex‐post by a physics‐based model in which earthquakes are triggered by Coulomb stress changes induced by other surrounding earthquakes. Notwithstanding the popularity of this kind of modeling, its ex‐ante skill in terms of earthquake predictability gain is still unknown. Here we show that even in synthetic systems that are rooted on the physics of fault interaction using the Coulomb stress changes, such a kind of modeling often does not increase significantly earthquake predictability. Earthquake predictability of a fault may increase only when the Coulomb stress change induced by a nearby earthquake is much larger than the stress changes caused by earthquakes on other faults and by the intrinsic variability of the earthquake occurrence process.