Increased earthquake rate prior to mainshocks

TL;DR

This study investigates the inverse Omori law, revealing a modest increase in earthquake rates prior to mainshocks in Southern California, and examines the law's statistical validity and modeling through ETAS simulations.

Contribution

Develops a new technique to identify mainshocks, foreshocks, and aftershocks, and analyzes the inverse Omori law's presence and limitations in real and simulated earthquake catalogs.

Findings

Earthquake rates increase a few days before mainshocks, but less so for higher magnitude thresholds.

The Omori-Utsu law does not hold for individual mainshocks but is valid statistically across many events.

ETAS model replicates some observed behaviors, supporting its use in earthquake modeling.

Abstract

According to the Omori-Utsu law, the rate of aftershocks after a mainshock decays as a power law with an exponent close to 1. This well-established law was intensively used in the past to study and model the statistical properties of earthquakes. Moreover, according to the so-called inverse Omori law, the rate of earthquakes should also increase prior to a mainshock -- this law has received much less attention due to its large uncertainty. Here, we mainly study the inverse Omori law based on a highly detailed Southern California earthquake catalog, which is complete for magnitudes larger than M>0.3. First, we develop a technique to identify mainshocks, foreshocks, and aftershocks. We then find, based on a statistical procedure we developed, that the rate of earthquakes is higher a few days prior to a mainshock. We find that this increase is much smaller for a catalog with a magnitude threshold of m over 2.5 and for the Epidemic-Type Aftershocks Sequence (ETAS) model catalogs, even when used with a small magnitude threshold. We also analyze the rate of aftershocks after mainshocks and find that the Omori-Utsu law does not hold for many individual mainshocks and that it may be valid only statistically when considering many mainshocks together. Yet, the analysis of the ETAS model based on the Omori-Utsu law exhibits similar behavior as that of the real catalogs, indicating the validity of this law.