Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
Tsunamis can be triggered as secondary disasters following megathrust earthquakes, with their intensity largely dependent on the magnitude of shallow seismic ruptures. Historically, considerable efforts have been dedicated to precisely determining the depth of these earthquakes using regional seismic waves.
T-waves are specific acoustic waves that propagate through the ocean’s low-velocity layer for thousands of kilometers at frequencies of 1-5 Hertz (Hz). Takemura et al. [2024] introduce an innovative use of T-waves to study tsunamigenic earthquakes, prompted by an unexpected tsunami wave triggered during an earthquake sequence (magnitudes of 4.3 to 5) on 8 October 2023 in Japan.
The authors find that the envelope of T-phases mirrors the source time function of the earthquake. Their numerical simulation results show that the excitation of T-waves is sensitive to the depth of moderate sized earthquakes, thus are sensitive to their tsunami generation ability. These observations of T-phases at off-shore stations may serve as promising evidence to predict the tsunami waves excited by moderate sized earthquakes.
Citation: Takemura, S., Kubota, T., & Sandanbata, O. (2024). Successive tsunamigenic events near Sofu Seamount inferred from high-frequency teleseismic P and regional T waves. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 129, e2024JB029746. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JB029746
—Han Yue, Associate Editor, JGR: Solid Earth
Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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