Earthquake tendency of the Himalayan seismic belt

TL;DR

This study introduces a theory on the brittle failure of locked patches in fault systems, analyzes seismicity trends in the Himalayan belt, and predicts a significant future earthquake within 10 years based on seismic parameters.

Contribution

It applies a developed theory of fault failure to analyze Himalayan seismicity and predicts the timing and magnitude of future characteristic earthquakes.

Findings

A MW 8.4-8.8 earthquake is likely in central Himalaya.

2015 Nepal earthquake parameters influence the predicted timing.

The zone is near a critical state for imminent large earthquakes.

Abstract

The theory about the brittle failures of multiple locked patches in a seismogenic fault system developed by us since 2010 is introduced in the present study. It is stated by the theory that the progressive failures of locked patch result in the occurrence of earthquakes due to fault movement, where the major earthquakes occurred at its volume expansion and peak strength points are referred to as characteristic ones. We analyze the seismogenic law of characteristic earthquakes in the Islamabad-Kathmandu seismic zone that extends along Himalayan seismic belt, and assess the seismicity trend of this zone by this theory. The results indicate that a MW 8.4 ~ 8.8 characteristic earthquake will strike the central Himalaya and the magnitude parameters of the 2015 Nepal earthquakes have a great impact on judging its occurrence time. When adopting the parameters by CEDC, the zone has almost reached the critical state and the expected characteristic one will take place in a short term (most likely within 10 years), probably with some less than or equal to MW 7.0 foreshocks. When adopting the parameters by NEIC, the occurrence time of the expected characteristic one cannot be judged at present until the critical state after the occurrence of some expected less than or equal to MW 8.1 preshocks is reached. Moreover, we reproduce the generation process of the 2015 Nepal earthquakes according to the self-similarity of seismogenic law for different-order locked patches.