Excellent and well-focused review and re-analysis!
Just a quick point - while the hypocenter vs centroid location question is not simple, I think the latter is the better choice. Earthquakes are essentially happening everywhere all the time, the decisive factor for the biggest events is likely to be the physical state where the event accumulates most of its moment.
Unless one chooses to interpret that the eventual rupture pattern is determined by the qualities of the slip pulse generated near the hypocenter, which has been sort of implied sometimes, but I would not favor.
Indeed the hypocenter vs centroid question is very interesting and seems critical for the method. It not only dramatically affects the statistics we see in basically every study, but as you suggest it also has a lot to do with how we might interpret any signal. So there's a lot to think about.
We will be looking into this more carefully in the near future, because some of the upcoming studies also show major centroid-origin differences that affect results. But since those are more local studies, we can actually grapple with the question of whether the centroid locations are meaningful, or are dominated by biases from the inversion method. Then maybe we will have some better understanding that could apply to the global studies as well.
Hi Michael, I lack gravitas myself, so I prefer supercalifragilisticexpitidalicious. But we'll keep the Latin in our back pocket in case of an emergency, and you'll get credit if we use it.
Excellent and well-focused review and re-analysis!
Just a quick point - while the hypocenter vs centroid location question is not simple, I think the latter is the better choice. Earthquakes are essentially happening everywhere all the time, the decisive factor for the biggest events is likely to be the physical state where the event accumulates most of its moment.
Unless one chooses to interpret that the eventual rupture pattern is determined by the qualities of the slip pulse generated near the hypocenter, which has been sort of implied sometimes, but I would not favor.
Hi John, thanks!
Indeed the hypocenter vs centroid question is very interesting and seems critical for the method. It not only dramatically affects the statistics we see in basically every study, but as you suggest it also has a lot to do with how we might interpret any signal. So there's a lot to think about.
We will be looking into this more carefully in the near future, because some of the upcoming studies also show major centroid-origin differences that affect results. But since those are more local studies, we can actually grapple with the question of whether the centroid locations are meaningful, or are dominated by biases from the inversion method. Then maybe we will have some better understanding that could apply to the global studies as well.
Might I suggest another word- "tidalific" lacks a certain gravitas. How about: aestigenic" from the Latin aestus, tide? Very science-y!
Hi Michael, I lack gravitas myself, so I prefer supercalifragilisticexpitidalicious. But we'll keep the Latin in our back pocket in case of an emergency, and you'll get credit if we use it.
Very sensa-lific! 😉