Earthquake magnitude estimation from peak amplitudes of very early seismic signals on strong motion records

Abstract

We show that the low-pass filtered, peak amplitudes of initial P- and S-wave seismic signals recorded in the vicinity of an occurring earthquake source correlates with the earthquake magnitude and may be used for real-time estimation of the event size in seismic early warning applications. The earthquake size can be therefore estimated using only a couple of seconds of signal from the P- or S-wave onsets, i.e. while the rupture itself is still propagating and rupture dimension is far from complete. We argue that dynamic stress release and/or slip duration on the fault in the very early stage of seismic fracture, scales both with the observed peak amplitude and with the elastic energy available for fracture propagation. The probability that a fracture grows to a larger size should scale with the energy initially available.