Towards systematic kinematic source models of historically large earthquakes

We are interested in systematically analyzing large ruptures to establish scaling laws of kinematic properties, such as rise times, slip rates, and rupture speeds. The challenge is that kinematic models for large (M6+) events are often produced with heterogenous methodologies and datasets. This makes synthesis of general behaviors challenging and results ambiguous. Additionally, as methods continue to develop, past events with good observations do not necessarily have slip models produced with modern methods. Thus, retrospective analysis of slip distributions is fundamental to allow us to further investigate general characteristics of source parameters during a rupture. 

Here we will discuss our plans to retrospectively process significant ruptures with new inversion techniques that are capable of jointly inverting teleseimsic body and surface waves, static and high-rate GNSS, InSAR, strong motion and tsunami data. We will highlight the approach by focusing on the M9.1 Tohoku-oki earthquake to showcase the advantages of the new approach. This earthquake in 2011 stands as one of the largest ruptures ever recorded and most closely observed earthquake in history due to the dense array of seismic and geodetic instrumentation in Japan. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to study this megathrust event and collect data near source. 

This analysis extends beyond the great M9.1 Tohoku-oki earthquake, actively contributing to the ongoing reevaluation of finite-fault models for large earthquakes dating back to the 1990s, while also incorporating regional data when available. Ultimately, we aim to refine source scaling properties of large earthquakes worldwide. Therefore, we will present our proposed workflow that involves not only systematizing the inversion process but also the creation of standardized and analysis-ready input source products. This is particularly important for InSAR and GNSS, which are quickly expanding their temporal and spatial sampling of crustal deformation worldwide.