Far field deformation analysis after the Mw9.0 Tohoku earthquake constrained by cGPS data

摘要

This study estimates the far field coseismic deformation of China and its surrounding areas caused by the Mw9.0 Tohoku earthquake of Japan using continuous GPS (cGPS) data and final orbits released by International GNSS Service (IGS). Based on these data, we feature the coseismic offsets of several plates affected by the event. Static far field coseismic offsets greater than 2 mm are detected in a wide area of China, which extends as far as about 3,000 km off the epicenter, consisting of that of the 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake. In northeast China, displacements up to 32.7 mm toward southeast are observed; meanwhile, offsets in North China reach about 5-11 mm toward east. Coseismic jumps of about 2-5 mm are measured in South China toward southeast. The southwest extrusion of the Philippine Sea plate is verified by GPS slip vectors, showing that the Philippine Sea plate is decoupled from the Pacific plate by the earthquake. We also infer that the Amurian plate and the Okhotsk plate couple well according to relatively continuous GPS offsets in these plates. Furthermore, the dense far field cGPS offsets due to the Tohoku event hopefully provide opportunities to model the coseismic slip distribution.