Instantaneous tracking of earthquake growth with elastogravity signals

Rapid and reliable estimation of large earthquake magnitude (above 8) is key to mitigating the risks associated with strong shaking and tsunamis¹. Standard early warning systems based on seismic waves fail to rapidly estimate the size of such large earthquakes²-⁵. Geodesy-based approaches provide better estimations, but are also subject to large uncertainties and latency associated with the slowness of seismic waves. Recently discovered speed-of-light prompt elastogravity signals (PEGS) have raised hopes that these limitations may be overcome⁶,⁷, but have not been tested for operational early warning. Here we show that PEGS can be used in real time to track earthquake growth instantaneously after the event reaches a certain magnitude. We develop a deep learning model that leverages the information carried by PEGS recorded by regional broadband seismometers in Japan before the arrival of seismic waves. After training on a database of synthetic waveforms augmented with empirical noise, we show that the algorithm can instantaneously track an earthquake source time function on real data. Our model unlocks ‘true real-time’ access to the rupture evolution of large earthquakes using a portion of seismograms that is routinely treated as noise, and can be immediately transformative for tsunami early warning.

Andrea Licciardi, Quentin Bletery, Bertrand Rouet-Leduc, Jean-Paul Ampuero, Kévin Juhel