An annually resolved 1800-year earthquake record of the Dead Sea Fault

Strong earthquakes (6<M_w (moment magnitude) <7) on fault zones usually with decadal recurrence intervals are supposed to pose a greater hazard to human society than large earthquakes (M_w >7), which occur much less frequently in century scale. Deciphering the recurrence pattern of strong earthquakes is crucial for seismic hazard assessment, and calls for a precise bracketing of the age of paleoearthquakes. However, the typical age precision of paleoearthquakes that are derived from radiogenic dating of terrestrial and subaqueous stratigraphic signatures is multiple decades to centuries long, much longer than recurrence intervals of strong earthquakes, making the precise constraining of earthquake recurrence patterns difficult.

Here, we present an annually resolved 1800-year paleoearthquake record that encompasses 19 strong earthquakes along the central Dead Sea Fault in the Middle East to reveal the variability of seismic shaking. The record reveals six full supercycles of strong shake with each lasting for ~300 years. The supercycle reappeared in the last millennium and was controlled by the spatiotemporal clustering of strong earthquakes that occurred on the fault. This newly deciphered recurrence pattern indicates the 1927 M_w 6.3 Jericho earthquake represents the last in a sequence of strong shake of the Dead Sea Basin, and the densely populated northern Dead Sea Fault zone is likely to have a higher seismic potential in the following decades to centuries.