European–Mediterranean Regional Centroid Moment Tensor catalog: Solutions for 2005–2008

Abstract

Since 1997 we maintain and systematically update the European–Mediterranean Regional Centroid Moment Tensor (RCMT) catalog, which contains seismic-moment tensors for earthquakes with moderate magnitude (4.5<M< 5.5) in the Mediterranean and European regions. We present 354 new solutions for the period 2005–2008. The Catalog now spans 12 years and contains more than 1000 definitive RCMT solutions. In addition to definitive solutions, we maintain and update a dataset of recent ‘quick’ solutions that are computed soon after an earthquake occurs using the more limited set of data available in quasi- real time. We investigate the reliability of the moment tensor results in the RCMT catalog. Comparison with Global CMT results, which is possible for the larger events (M< 5.0) in the RCMT catalog, shows that for 75% of the events, the Kagan angle measure of the similarity of two moment tensors is smaller than 20◦, reflecting good agreement of the results. We describe improvements and enhancements in the dissemination of the RCMT results through our website.