JGR Oceans - 2018 - An - Prediction of Tsunami Waves by Uniform Slip Models

Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
RESEARCH ARTICLE Prediction of Tsunami Waves by Uniform Slip Models

10.1029/2018JC014363
Chao An1 , Hua Liu1 , Zhiyuan Ren2 , and Ye Yuan2

Key Points:
• For three investigated earthquakes, 1 Key Laboratory of Hydrodynamics (Ministry of Education), School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering,
uniform slip models predict tsunami
waves of high accuracy if properly Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, 2 National Marine Environmental Forecasting Center, Beijing, China
constructed
• Common parameters of uniform
models are obtained; location of the Abstract Conventional tsunami warning systems for local and far-field areas utilize uniform slip models
rupture is tested against the gCMT
centroid
to predict tsunami waves. The reasons are twofold. First, it is challenging to develop accurate finite-fault slip
• The results have potential to be models in a short time after an earthquake. Second, tsunami waves are long waves, and hence, the main
applied for rapid tsunami warning feature may be predicted without knowing earthquake rupture details. Still, there have been few studies
purposes
that quantitatively analyze the errors caused by uniform slip models. In this paper, we evaluate if and how
such models may be applied for tsunami warnings. For the 2011 Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel
Supporting Information: tsunamis, we first construct optimum uniform slip models with minimum tsunami waveform misfit and
• Supporting Information S1
then compare the synthetic tsunami waves with finite-fault model predictions. Predictions from both type
of models match the tsunami data very well, indicating that the prediction errors caused by neglecting slip
Correspondence to: heterogeneity are insignificant. Further, we derive a common relation between the rupture area and
C. An,
earthquake magnitude. Additionally, the optimum rupture length and width ratio in terms of predicting
anchao@sjtu.edu.cn
tsunami waves is determined to be 1 for the three earthquakes. Lastly, we find that moving the uniform slip
model to the center of global Centroid Moment Tensor solution produces reasonably small errors in the
Citation: predicted waveforms. Applying the methodology to three more historic tsunamis shows that uniform slip
An, C., Liu, H., Ren, Z., & Yuan, Y. (2018).
Prediction of tsunami waves by uniform models can well recover the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis system recordings, but
slip models. Journal of Geophysical the rupture center can differ from the global Centroid Moment Tensor solution. Our findings can potentially
Research: Oceans, 123, 8366–8382. prompt more reliable tsunami warning strategies for future events.
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JC014363
Plain Language Summary Most tsunami warning systems produce tsunami predictions
Received 22 JUL 2018 according to an earthquake magnitude. Earthquake rupture can be very complex, and earthquakes of the
Accepted 1 NOV 2018 same magnitude may generate different tsunami waves. However, in the tsunami warning procedure, the
Accepted article online 5 NOV 2018
rupture process is simply assumed to be a uniform rupture in a rectangular area. Although this approach
Published online 19 NOV 2018
of simplification is widely adopted, there has not been quantitative research to evaluate the prediction
errors of tsunamis. In this study, we analyze three well-documented tsunamis and demonstrate that such a
simplification indeed causes acceptable prediction errors. Further, an empirical relation is proposed based
on tsunami data to estimate the rupture length and width. It is supposed to be more suitable for tsunami
predictions than the existing one derived from seismic data. The new relation is tested for more tsunami
events, and results show it leads to accurate predictions. The conclusions will help tsunami warning systems
to provide more accurate predictions of tsunami wave heights based earthquake magnitudes.
1. Introduction
Tsunami warning systems are designed to predict tsunami waves before they strike coastal areas and cause
severe damage. The procedure of prediction usually consists of two stages, that is, estimate of earthquake
source mechanism and numerical simulation of tsunami waves. In order to accurately predict the wave height
and arrival time, it is essential to properly construct an earthquake source model. For near-field regions
where tsunami data are not available in real time, a commonly adopted operational approach is to predict
tsunamis based on earthquake magnitude and precalculated tsunami database (e.g., Greenslade & Titov,
2008; Greenslade et al., 2011; Kamigaichi, 2009; Rudloff et al., 2009; Setiyono et al., 2017). Before an earthquake
occurs, uniform slip models are constructed for subduction zones with potential tsunami genesis, according
to a given earthquake magnitude, with the rupture length, width, and slip determined based on scaling rela-
tionships with earthquake magnitude (e.g., Blaser et al., 2010; Mai & Beroza, 2000; Murotani et al., 2008, 2013;
©2018. American Geophysical Union. Strasser et al., 2010; Wells & Coppersmith, 1994). The generated tsunami waves are numerically simulated
All Rights Reserved. and stored. After an earthquake, tsunami warnings are issued based on the scenario with the most similar
AN ET AL. 8366
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Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 10.1029/2018JC014363
earthquake magnitude. The state-of-the-art research on local tsunami warning techniques still focuses on the
fast estimate of earthquake magnitude (e.g., Melgar & Bock, 2013; Melgar et al., 2015, 2016), or earthquake
rupture extent (An & Meng, 2016), and prediction of tsunami waves using uniform slip models. Besides, uni-
form slip models are also used by researchers to assess local tsunami hazards (e.g., Ren et al., 2017; Wu &
Huang, 2009). Although it is widely accepted that tsunami waves are long waves, and hence, the main fea-
ture can be predicted without knowing earthquake rupture details, there have been few studies to quantify
the differences between uniform and heterogeneous slip models in terms of generating tsunami waves (e.g.,
Greenslade & Titov, 2008).
In the open ocean, the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis system (DART), operated by
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provides real-time recordings of tsunami waves (Gonzalez
et al., 1998). Utilizing such data, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is able to build heterogeneous slip models
and issue accurate tsunami predictions for areas at large distances from an earthquake source. The poten-
tial source area is divided to unit earthquake sources, and the slip on each unit source is determined by an
inverse algorithm (e.g., Percival et al., 2011; Satake, 1987; Wei et al., 2003). Those unit sources with nontrivial
slip are combined to construct a heterogeneous slip model, which is then implemented in numerical simu-
lations to predict the tsunami waves (e.g., Gica et al., 2008). This approach has been tested against several
retrospective experiments of large tsunami events and achieved good performance (Short-Term Inundation
Forecast for Tsunamis [SIFT]; Tang et al., 2016; Titov et al., 2005; Wei et al., 2008). The unit sources of the
SIFT system have a relatively large size—100 km in length (along strike) and 50 km in width (along dip;
https://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/propagation-database.html). Yet earthquake source studies based on finite-fault
inversions often use smaller subfault sizes between 20 and 50 km (e.g., An et al., 2014; Fujii et al., 2011;
Gusman et al., 2015; Lay et al., 2014; Satake et al., 2013). Therefore, it is meaningful to investigate how sig-
nificantly the large subfault size affects prediction errors of tsunami waves. Greenslade and Titov (2008)
compared the tsunami waves predicted by uniform (Australian T1 tsunami warning system) and heteroge-
neous (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration SIFT) slip models for the 2006 Mw 8.0 Tonga and
2007 Mw 8.4 Sumatra earthquakes and showed that both compared well with field observations. In this
study, we compare the tsunami waves predicted by uniform and heterogeneous slip models in three recent
well-recorded tsunamis, that is, the 2011 Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel events. The heterogeneous
models are obtained by inverting tsunami data with finite-fault grid size of 20–25 km. If uniform slip models
lead to reasonably good predictions, it is likely that the large subfault size adopted by Pacific Tsunami Warning
Center is also acceptable for tsunami warning purposes.
To build a uniform slip model according to a given earthquake magnitude, the fault orientation can be
obtained from the local slab geometry (e.g., Slab 1.0; Hayes et al., 2012). Additionally, a scaling relation is
required between the earthquake magnitude and other rupture parameters, such as the rupture area, length,
width, and average slip. Wells and Coppersmith (1994) derived scaling relations based on a large data set of
244 earthquakes, with magnitude mostly between Mw 5 and Mw 8, including all slip types with the excep-
tion of thrust faulting events in subduction zones. Despite that their data set lacks Mw 8 or larger earthquakes
that generate tsunamis, the results have been widely used to access tsunami hazards near subduction areas
(e.g., Wu & Huang, 2009). on the basis of the above study, more research was conducted by using larger earth-
quake data sets to improve the scaling relations (Blaser et al., 2010; Mai & Beroza, 2000; Strasser et al., 2010;
Thingbaijam et al., 2017). Murotani et al. (2008) collected 26 interplate earthquakes in the Japan region, with
moment magnitude range from Mw 6.7 to 8.4, and obtained a scaling relation between the earthquake
moment and area of asperities by assuming a scaling slope of two thirds. The area of asperities is defined as the
rupture area with slip 1.5 times larger than the average slip. Murotani et al. (2013) added seven giant (Mw ∼ 9)
subduction thrust events and derived very close scaling relations to their previous work (Murotani et al., 2008).
Current tsunami warning systems adopt a variety of scaling relations. For example, the Japan tsunami warning
system operated by the Japan Meteorological Agency (Kamigaichi, 2009), which was developed since 1999,
uses the following scaling relations: log L = 0.5Mw − 1.8 and L = 2W (L rupture length, W rupture width,
and Mw earthquake magnitude). The South China Sea tsunami warning system operated by National Marine
Environment Forecasting Center (China) adopts the scaling relations given by Wells and Coppersmith (1994)
and Ren et al. (2014). The Australian T1 warning system assumes L = W up to L = 10W for different earth-
quake magnitude (Greenslade & Titov, 2008). The Indonesian warning system, cobuilt by Germany (Setiyono
et al., 2017), uses M0 = 43 log S + 3.03 and L = 2W (M0 moment magnitude and S rupture area), given by
AN ET AL. 8367
Figure 1. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake. (a) Location of the epicenter and tsunami stations. The red and blue asterisks
denote the USGS epicenter and gCMT centroid (Ekström et al., 2012), respectively. The magenta and black inverse
triangles mark the location of DART buoys and coastal stations, respectively. Note that the coastal stations consist of
GPS buoys, seabed wave gauges, and coastal tide gauges. Detailed information can be found from the Nationwide
Ocean Wave Information Network for Ports Harbours website (http://nowphas.mlit.go.jp/chiten.htm, in Japanese). The
region in the white box is shown in (b)–(e). (b) The heterogeneous slip model obtained by inverting tsunami data.
(c) The optimum uniform slip model. (d) The uniform slip model with similar scaling relations for the three earthquakes.
(e) A same-sized uniform slip model as (d) but with its center located at the gCMT centroid. DART = Deep-ocean
Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis system; USGS = U.S. Geological Survey; gCMT = global Centroid Moment Tensor.
Hanks and Bakun (2002). In this paper, by investigating three large tsunami events, we aim to provide some
insights to the application of these scaling relations to tsunami warning systems.
This paper is organized as follows. In section 2, for each of the 2011 Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel
tsunamis, we perform a global search to find the optimum uniform slip model and compare the predicted
tsunami waves from the optimum uniform model and the heterogeneous model from inversion of tsunami
data. In section 3, from all the uniform slip models with acceptable tsunami data fitting, we find those with
similar relations between rupture parameters and earthquake magnitude for all the three events. Then, we
investigate the error of tsunami prediction caused by locating the uniform slip model to the center of the
global Centroid Moment Tensor (gCMT) solution. In section 4, the methodology of constructing uniform
slip models from the optimum common relations and the gCMT centroid is applied to three more historic
tsunamis, and the prediction errors are discussed. Followed is the conclusion section.
2. Optimum Uniform Slip Models

First, we construct heterogeneous slip models by inverting tsunami data for three earthquakes—the 2011
Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel earthquake. For the 2011 Tohoku event, the tsunami data are from 4
DART buoys and 24 coastal stations (Figure 1a). The fault orientation is treated as a single plane with strike
angle of 193∘ and dip angle of 14∘ (Fujii et al., 2011). The rupture area is divided into 192 subfault patches with
16 along strike and 12 along dip, and the subfault size is 25 × 25 km. By assuming instantaneous rupture on all
the subfaults, the Green’s functions are calculated using tsunami simulation package COMCOT (Liu et al., 1998;
Wang & Liu, 2006), and the slip distribution is derived using a nonnegative least square algorithm that min-
imizes the waveform residual of tsunami waves (Lawson & Hanson, 1974). The obtained slip model is shown
in Figure 1b. Satake et al. (2013) performed tsunami inversions that take into account the temporal rupture
process and showed that the prediction of near-field tsunami waveforms may vary significantly compared to
instantaneous rupture. In this paper, for the sake of simplicity and pure evaluation of effects of spatial slip
distribution, we ignore the kinematic rupture process and adopt the assumption of instantaneous rupture.
For the 2014 Iquique event, the tsunami data from 3 DART buoys and 14 coastal stations are used (Figure 2a).
The fault geometry has a uniform strike angle of 340∘ , and its down-dip curvature is extracted from the local
slab geometry (Slab1.0; Hayes et al., 2012). The fault area is divided into 144 subfaults with 12 along strike
and 12 along dip, and the subfault size is 20 × 20 km. Similarly to the Tohoku event, the Green’s functions are
AN ET AL. 8368
Figure 2. The 2014 Iquique earthquake. (a) Location of the epicenter and tsunami stations. The red and blue asterisks
denote the U.S. Geological Survey epicenter and Harvard gCMT centroid, respectively. The magenta and black inverse
triangles mark the location of DART buoys and coastal stations, respectively. The region in the white box is shown in
(b)–(e). (b) The heterogeneous slip model obtained by inverting tsunami data. (c) The optimum uniform slip model.
(d) The uniform slip model with similar scaling relations for the three earthquakes. (e) A same-sized uniform slip model
as (d) but with its center located at the gCMT centroid. gCMT = global Centroid Moment Tensor.
calculated using COMCOT, and the heterogeneous slip model is solved using the nonnegative least square
algorithm, shown in Figure 2b.
For the 2015 Illapel event, we use tsunami data from 2 DART buoys and 22 coastal stations (Figure 3a). The
fault geometry is derived from the local slab orientation (Slab1.0; Hayes et al., 2012) with a uniform strike
angle of 4∘ and varying dip angle in depth. The subfault division has 144 patches with 12 along strike and 12
along dip, and the subfault size is 20 × 20 km. For this earthquake, the tsunami stations are mostly located
along the coastal line, providing weak constraints for the rupture in the along-dip direction (An et al., 2017).
AN ET AL. 8369
Figure 3. The 2015 Illapel earthquake. (a) Location of the epicenter and tsunami stations. The red and blue asterisks denote the U.S. Geological Survey epicenter
and Harvard gCMT centroid, respectively. The magenta and black inverse triangles mark the location of DART buoys and coastal stations, respectively. The region
in the white box is shown in (b)–(e). (b) The heterogeneous slip model obtained by inverting tsunami, GPS, and InSAR data. (c) The optimum uniform slip model.
(d) The uniform slip model with similar scaling relations for the three earthquakes. (e) A same-sized uniform slip model as (d) but with its center located at the
gCMT centroid. gCMT = global Centroid Moment Tensor.
Therefore, we further include inland GPS and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) data in the
inversion. Details can be found in An et al. (2017). An et al. (2017) jointly inverted tele-seismic, GPS, InSAR,
and tsunami data to derive a kinematic slip model. In this paper, to only assess the effects of heterogeneous
slip distribution, the kinematic rupture process is ignored. Thus, we exclude the tele-seismic data and obtain
a static slip model with only the final slip distribution, shown in Figure 3b.
For all the three earthquakes, the global bathymetry data GEBCO_2014(General Bathymetric Chart of the
Oceans) with a uniform resolution of 30 arcsec are used to calculate the Green’s functions. The linear shal-
low water wave equations are solved. In the numerical algorithm, the time step is 0.8 s to satisfy the
Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (C.F.L.) condition, and the total simulating time is 14,000 s. For all the three earth-
quakes, we also tested different subfault size in the finite-fault inversions, which is set to be 25 × 25, 50 × 50,
and 100×100 km for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and 20×20, 40×40, and 60×60 km for the 2014 Iquique and
2015 Illapel earthquakes. The resulted slip models are shown in supporting information Figures S1, S3, and
S5, and the corresponding tsunami waves are plotted in Figures S2, S4, and S6 for the three earthquakes. It
is found that, although the slip models with different spatial resolution vary significantly in details, the pre-
dicted tsunami waves are somewhat similar. The arrival time and amplitude are largely recovered by all the
finite-fault models. This leads to a reasonable expectation of predicting tsunami waves, especially the arrival
time and amplitude for tsunami warning purposes, by uniform slip models.
In the second step, we seek the optimum uniform slip model by globally searching and evaluating all possi-
ble rectangular rupture areas. This is done by utilizing the subfault division in the first step. Taking the 2011
Tohoku earthquake as an example, there are 192 subfaults. A certain number of connected subfaults can form
a rectangle or other shapes. Traditional tsunami warning strategies usually assume rectangular uniform slip
models, so here we only investigate the rectangles. There are in total 10,608 rectangles, with different cen-
troid location, length, and width. The centroid can be the center of any subfault grids, the length varies from
25 to 400 km, and the width varies from 25 to 300 km. An example of 110 rectangles is shown in Figure S7. For
each one, making use of the Green’s functions, the uniform slip over the rectangle is obtained by minimizing
the fitting residual of tsunami waves in a least-square sense. A rectangle along with its uniform slip leads to
a uniform slip model. Strictly speaking, these rectangles do not completely represent all possible rectangular
AN ET AL. 8370
Figure 4. Comparison of tsunami data and prediction of heterogeneous and optimum uniform slip models for the 2011
Tohoku earthquake. (top) Comparison of waveforms; (bottom) comparison of amplitude and arrival time. The
vertical-dashed lines denote the time segments used in the tsunami inversions. The numbers on top of the waves show
the first-wave amplitude of the recordings.
rupture areas, as the subfault grid size is finite. However, any other rectangular rupture can be approximated
by one of the rectangles with an error less than one subfault length (20–25 km). The 10,608 uniform slip mod-
els are sorted by the fitting residual for tsunami waves. The slip model with the least residual is chosen as the
optimum uniform slip model, shown in Figures 1c, 2c, and 3c for the 2011 Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015
Illapel earthquake, respectively. The initial water elevation profile resulted from these slip models are provided
in Figures S8–S10.
The comparison of tsunami data and predictions by the heterogeneous and optimum uniform slip models is
shown in Figures 4–6 for the 2011 Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel earthquake, respectively. It is seen
from the plots that the predictions from the uniform slip models do not perfectly recover the data as we have
made relevant assumptions. For example, for the Tohoku event, the wave amplitude at stations 802–804 is
underestimated by both the finite-fault and the uniform slip models. It has been proposed that submarine
mass failure may have contributed to the extremely large wave heights between about 39∘ and 40∘ N (e.g.,
Grilli et al., 2013; Tappin et al., 2014). Also, Satake et al. (2013) showed that the horizontal component of the
seafloor displacement may contribute 20–40% of the maximum wave amplitude at some near-field stations.
Nevertheless, in this study for the purpose of investigating the difference between a finite-fault model and
a uniform slip model, we have ignored other possible secondary tsunami sources and only incorporated the
vertical seafloor displacement. We observe that the difference of the tsunami waveforms predicted by the het-
erogeneous and uniform slip models is insignificant, and both of the predictions match the data very well. At
some near-field stations, such as 801 and 803 for the Tohoku event, the optimum uniform slip model has larger
prediction errors than the finite-fault model. These stations may be more sensitive to the source heterogene-
ity than others and, hence, contain valuable information about the earthquake source details. Nevertheless,
the predicted waveforms by the optimum uniform models are still acceptable for tsunami warning purposes.
AN ET AL. 8371
Iquique earthquake. (top) Comparison of waveforms; (bottom) comparison of amplitude and arrival time.
In the Tohoku event, the averaged normalized root mean square error over all the stations is 5.45% and 6.46%
for the predicted tsunami waves from the finite-fault and optimum uniform models, respectively. The aver-
aged normalized root mean square errors are 12.33% and 12.92% for the Iquique event and 7.37% and 7.53%
for the Illapel event.
In order to compare the results in more details, we also show the exact values of the first-wave amplitude and
arrival time in Figures 4–6. Here the amplitude is defined as the wave height of the crest, the arrival time is
the time of initial elevation of the crest, and they are picked by a computer script to avoid subjective bias. The
computer script first searches a crest by a local maxima and then determines the crest’s starting and ending
time by the crossing points with zero water elevation. The crest is recognized as the first tsunami wave if its
lasting time is longer than 5 min. Details about the algorithm can be found in An and Liu (2014). An example
of picking the first-wave arrival time and amplitude for the observations during the 2011 Tohoku earthquake
is shown in Figure S11. It is found that the arrival time and amplitude predicted by both the finite-fault model
and optimum uniform model agree well with the data. In the Tohoku event, the averaged error of first-wave
arrival time is 6.45 and 5.18 min for the finite-fault model and optimum uniform model, respectively; the aver-
aged error of first-wave amplitude is 0.71 and 0.67 m, respectively. In the Iquique event, the averaged error of
first-wave arrival time is 4.89 and 3.53 min; the averaged error of first-wave amplitude is 0.33 and 0.29 m. In the
Illapel event, the averaged error of first-wave arrival time is 3.98 and 2.93 min; the averaged error of first-wave
amplitude is 0.16 and 0.08 m. All the errors are of the same order of magnitude. Note that both the finite-fault
AN ET AL. 8372
Illapel earthquake. (top) Comparison of waveforms; (bottom) comparison of amplitude and arrival time.
and optimum uniform models are developed to minimize waveform residuals, so the averaged error of arrival
time and amplitude is not necessarily smaller for finite-fault models than that of optimum uniform slip models.
Therefore, it is concluded that, for the three investigated earthquakes, optimum uniform slip models can
predict tsunami waves almost equally well as heterogeneous models. This phenomenon was noticed by An
(2015), who found that using large subfault size in tsunami inversions, such as 100 × 100 km for the Tohoku
earthquake, does not necessarily affect the prediction of tsunami waves. On such basis, An and Meng (2016)
proposed a tsunami warning method that constructs uniform slip models according to the rupture area
derived from seismic array backprojection. Most modern research on near-field tsunami warning still relies on
uniform slip models that are built based on earthquake magnitude (e.g., Melgar et al., 2016), so it is essential
to check the assumption of uniform slip distribution. Our results indicate that ignoring the slip distribution
only causes insignificant prediction errors of tsunami waves.
For local tsunami hazard assessment, it is now a popular approach to account for uncertainties in earthquake
slip distributions. Given a potential earthquake of presumed magnitude, different slip distributions can be
generated with different probabilities (Mai & Beroza, 2002), and they result in different tsunami wave heights
at coastal regions (Geist, 2002; Goda et al., 2014, 2015; LeVeque et al., 2016; Li et al., 2016; Sepúlveda et al.,
2017). Here we point out that the fact of tsunamis depending on slip distributions is not contradictory to our
results. In fact, although different randomly generated slip distributions generate different tsunami waves,
it is likely that each of them can be roughly represented by a uniform slip distribution. We note here that
the conclusion is derived from the above-mentioned three earthquakes, and further verification might be
required for earthquakes of more complicated source process, such as the 2004 Sumatra earthquake with
extremely long rupture and duration (Fujii & Satake, 2007; Ishii et al., 2005; Lay et al., 2005).
AN ET AL. 8373
Table 1
Common Relations of Uniform Slip Models for Three Earthquakes
Slip Model km km 103 km2 1021 Nm 10−11
2011 Tohoku L W S M0 (Mw) C
Finite-fault (subfault 25 km) — — 27.5 39.1 (8.99) 2.39
Optimum uniform (rank 1) 150 200 30.0 29.4 (8.91) 3.15
Common C, L∕W (rank 19) 150 150 22.5 22.1 (8.83) 2.86
2014 Iquique
Common C, L∕W (rank 24) 60 60 3.60 1.35 (8.02) 2.95
2015 Illapel
Common C, L∕W (rank 4) 60 60 3.60 1.42 (8.04) 2.85
2∕3 Fault length L
Common C and L∕W S = 2.89 × 10−11 M0 Fault width W
= 1.00
Note. Rupture length (L, in km), width (W , in km), area (S, in 103 km2 ), earthquake moment
(M0 , in 1021 Nm), and scaling constant coefficient (C, in 10−11 ) are given.
3. Common Parameters and Location of Uniform Slip Models

In this section, we derive the common relations that scale the rupture parameters with the earthquake
moment, which will be useful for construction of uniform slip models based on earthquake magnitude. We
point out that, since only three earthquakes are studied in this paper, the common relations here are only
the similarities among these three earthquakes. Ideally, if there are enough statistical samples of different
earthquake magnitudes, it is feasible to constrain the scaling relations with minimum assumptions, such as
a linear relation between log M0 and log S (M0 earthquake moment and S rupture area). This is the approach
adopted by many previous studies (e.g., Blaser et al., 2010; Murotani et al., 2008; Strasser et al., 2010; Wells &
Coppersmith, 1994). In our study, further prior assumptions have to be made. Murotani et al. (2013) assumed
2∕3
a slope of two thirds between log M0 and log Sa (Sa asperity size) and obtained Sa = 2.81 × 10−11 M0 (Sa
asperity size in square kilometer and M0 earthquake moment in Newton meter). We use a similar equation,
2∕3
S = CM0 , (1)
to fit our finite-fault and uniform slip models, where S is the rupture area and M0 is the earthquake moment.
Here S is the rupture area of the uniform slip models, which differs from the actual rupture area with nonzero
slip during the earthquake. Instead, it represents the proxy rupture area for predicting tsunami waves. Simi-
larly, the length L and width W of the rupture are the proxy length and width for predicting tsunami waves.
This is similar to the asperity size Sa defined by Murotani et al. (2013), which is the rupture area with slip greater
than 1.5 times of the average slip in finite-fault models. The rigidity used in this study varies in depth, which
is derived from the Preliminary Reference Earth Model (Dziewonski & Anderson, 1981). For each of the three
earthquakes, using Sa for the finite-fault models and S for the optimum uniform slip models, the constant
coefficient C is derived. The results are listed in Table 1.
It is seen from Table 1 that, for each event, the constant coefficient C is different for the finite-fault and opti-
mum uniform slip models. In addition, for either the finite-fault or optimum uniform slip models, C also varies
with events. Besides, the ratio of rupture length and width (L∕W ) for optimum uniform slip models changes
with events. In order to find unified scaling parameters, we explore more uniform slip models other than
the optimum ones. As stated in the previous section, we have globally searched all the possible rectangu-
lar rupture areas for each earthquake, and the uniform slip models are sorted by their fitting residuals. This
leads to a rank index for each model. The one with the least residual is chosen as the optimum slip model
(rank 1). Yet other models with a higher rank may also predict the tsunami waves reasonably well, although
they have higher fitting residuals. Thus, we search for slip models with similar C and L∕W from the top n
(n = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50) slip models of each event.
AN ET AL. 8374
Figure 7. Uniform slip models with similar C and L∕W among top n models for the three earthquakes. Each point
represents a uniform slip model with different C and L∕W . The algorithm given in the main text seeks the slip models
that have similar C and L∕W . Filled symbols are the three uniform slip models for the three earthquakes with the closest
C and L∕W values. Black boxes denote the smallest searching area that contains at least one uniform slip model for each
earthquake. (a) n = 10; (b) n = 20; (c) n = 30; and (d) n = 40.
The searching process, shown in Figure 7, is described as follows. We first choose the top n slip models based
on their fitting residuals and find the maximum and minimum values of C and L∕W in these models, denoted
as maxC, minC, maxLW, and minLW. Then we define a rectangular area with length of (maxC − minC)∕i and
width of (maxLW − minLW)∕i, where i is an integer. The location of the rectangle is looped in the entire C and
L∕W space to check if it contains C and L∕W for all the three events. By setting i = 1, 2, 3, ..., the rectangular
area is gradually reduced. When i = 1, the rectangle covers the whole space, and all the slip models are inside;
Table 2
Similar Common Parameters for the Three Earthquakes
Among top 10 Model rank C L∕W
2011 Tohoku 7 3.33 1.00
2014 Iquique 10 3.80 2.00
2015 Illapel 4 2.85 1.00
Among top 20
2011 Tohoku 19 2.86 1.00
2014 Iquique 13 2.87 1.50
2015 Illapel 4 2.85 1.00
Among top 30
2011 Tohoku 19 2.86 1.00
2014 Iquique 24 2.95 1.00
2015 Illapel 4 2.85 1.00
Among top 40 same as top 30
Among top 50 same as top 30
Note. The model rank indicates the rank of the uniform model among all the
models sorted by the wave residuals.
AN ET AL. 8375
Figure 8. Comparison of tsunami data, prediction of uniform slip model with common C and L∕W values, and
prediction of uniform slip model with its center located at gCMT centroid for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. (top)
Comparison of waveforms; (bottom) comparison of amplitude and arrival time. The vertical-dashed lines denote the
time segments used in the tsunami inversions. gCMT = global Centroid Moment Tensor.
when the rectangular is small enough, no matter where it is located, there will not be three slip models for
each event that are inside the rectangle. The smallest area that contains at least one slip model for each event
is shown as black boxes in Figure 7, and the three slip models within this area are denoted by filled symbols.
In Figures 7a–7d, the size of the black boxes is (maxC − minC)∕i × (maxLW − minLW)∕i, with i being 4, 25, 77,
and 84, respectively. If reducing the size by one more degree, for instance, setting i = 5 for n = 10, there will
not be three slip models for the three earthquakes that instantaneously appear inside the rectangle.
Through the above procedure, we obtain the three uniform slip models with closes C and L∕W values. The
results are shown in Table 2. As n increases, it is able to find three slip models with more similar C and L∕W
values for the three earthquakes; although at the same time, the slip models will have higher fitting residuals.
We find that for n = 30, 40, 50, the results are the same; the variance of C for the three events is small, and
the L∕W value is exactly the same. Although it is possible to obtain smaller variance of the C value by keeping
increasing n, the fitting residuals are also higher, leading to unclear errors in predicting tsunami wave ampli-
tude and arrival time. Thus, we choose the results of n = 30 as our common C and L∕W values. Taking the
average of the C values for the three earthquakes, we obtain common relations as (also in Table 1)
2∕3 Fault Length L

S = 2.89 × 10−11 M0 , = 1.00. (2)
Fault Width W
The uniform slip models with such common relations are different from the optimum uniform models and
have higher fitting residuals. It is therefore necessary to verify that the predictions of tsunami waves from those
models still match the tsunami data. The three slip models are displayed in Figures 1d, 2d, and 3d for the 2011
Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel earthquakes, respectively. Predicted tsunami waves are compared with
the tsunami data in Figures 8–10 for the three earthquakes, respectively. Theoretically, the predictions suffer
AN ET AL. 8376
prediction of uniform slip model with its center located at gCMT centroid for the 2014 Iquique earthquake. (top)
Comparison of waveforms; (bottom) comparison of amplitude and arrival time. gCMT = global Centroid Moment Tensor.
from higher fitting residuals than those from finite-fault and optimum uniform models. Still, good agreement
with the tsunami data is achieved. Thus, for the three investigated events, by compensating the fitting residu-
als to some extent, we obtain consistent scaling relations to the earthquake magnitude, and the resulted slip
models lead to good predictions of tsunami waveforms, wave amplitude, and arrival time.
To construct a uniform slip model, it is required to determine not only the rupture length and width but also
the location of the rupture area. In the above analysis, the models with the common C and L∕W values are
optimally located, that is, the centroid of the rectangles is obtained from a global search that minimizes the
fitting residuals. For realistic operations in a tsunami warning system, it is desired that the location should
be related to some earthquake source parameters, such as the epicenter, so that the uniform slip model can
be constructed in real time. The hypocenter of an earthquake, however, usually represents the initial rupture
on the fault, because it is determined by the initial arrival of seismic waves. Here we test the location of the
uniform slip models against the centroid of the CMT solution. Concretely, the rupture length, width, and slip
of the models with common C and L∕W (models shown in Figures 1d, 2d, and 3d) are retained, and the cen-
troid is relocated to the Harvard CMT centroid (Ekström et al., 2012). The resulted slip models are displayed
in Figures 1e, 2e, and 3e for the 2011 Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel earthquake, respectively. The
predicted tsunami waves, amplitude, and arrival time are given in Figures 8–10. For the 2014 Iquique event,
the relocating distance is relatively insignificant, so it does not cause severe prediction errors. For the 2011
AN ET AL. 8377
prediction of uniform slip model with its center located at gCMT centroid for the 2015 Illapel earthquake. (top)
Comparison of waveforms; (bottom) comparison of amplitude and arrival time. gCMT = global Centroid Moment Tensor.
Tohoku and 2015 Illapel events, the relocating distance is larger, leading to observable prediction errors of
arrival time, such as stations 613, 21401, and 21419 in the Tohoku event (Figure 8) and stations qtro, sano, and
buca in the Illapel event (Figure 10). Nevertheless, the predicted waveforms as well as wave amplitude and
arrival time are acceptable for all the three earthquakes, especially for tsunami warning purposes. A summary
of all the prediction errors for the three earthquakes is given in Table 3.
In addition to the evaluation of tsunami arrival time and amplitude at wave gauges, we also calculate the
run-up heights along the coastline and compared the predictions with the survey data. The numerical simu-
lations utilize the bathymetry with a uniform spatial resolution of 30 arcsec. The results are shown in Figure
S12–S14 for the 2011 Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illaple events, respectively. It is observed that the
discrepancies of the run-up heights from the finite-fault and three uniform models are reasonably small, indi-
cating that the simplification of the source models causes acceptable errors on the run-up height, which
agrees well with the analysis of tsunami arrival time and amplitude at wave gauges. The predicted run-up
between 39∘ and 40∘ N for the Tohoku event is smaller than the observed data, which may be possibly due
to the neglecting of other tsunami sources (Grilli et al., 2013; Tappin et al., 2014) and the horizontal seafloor
displacement (Satake et al., 2013).
4. Discussion: Application to Other Tsunami Events

The 2011 Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel tsunamis are the best documented ones in history. Most
other tsunami events have limited data recordings, so it is challenging to perform similar analysis. Instead of
analyzing more events in the same way, here we conduct forward simulations to test if our results apply to
AN ET AL. 8378
Table 3
Prediction Errors From Different Slip Models
2011 Tohoku Finite-fault Optimum uniform Common C, L∕W gCMT centroid
NRMSE 5.45% 6.46% 6.63% 10.29%
Arrival time error (min) 6.45 5.18 5.07 6.91
Amplitude error (m) 0.71 0.67 0.64 0.74
2014 Iquique Finite-fault Optimum uniform Common C, L∕W gCMT centroid
NRMSE 12.33% 12.92% 13.42% 19.00%
2015 Illapel Finite-fault Optimum uniform Common C, L∕W gCMT centroid
NRMSE 7.37% 7.53% 7.64% 10.16%
Note. gCMT = global Centroid Moment Tensor; NRMSE = normalized root mean square error.
other tsunamis. We select earthquakes between 2004 and 2018 based on two criteria: (1) at least one DART
station recorded tsunami waves higher than 5 cm; and (2) the fault geometry is relatively clearly known, that is,
documented by the Slab 1.0 project (Hayes et al., 2012). There are in total four earthquakes that satisfy the first
criterion, among which the 2017 Chiapas, Mexico earthquake (Mw 8.2) is excluded by the second criterion.
The remaining three events are the 2007 Pisco, Peru earthquake (Mw 8.0), the 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake
(Mw 8.8), and the 2013 Santa Cruz Islands, Solomon earthquake (Mw 7.9).
For these three earthquakes, we first construct uniform slip models using the above-derived common relation
for earthquake magnitude and rupture area, as well as the optimum length/width ratio. They are shown as
red-filled rectangles in Figures 11a–11c. Then, the tsunami waves generated by these models are numerically
simulated. We find that the predicted waveforms present clear differences from the recorded data, especially
in terms of arrival time (inset panels in Figures 11a–11c). Keeping the rupture dimension and slip unchanged,
we seek to improve the wave predictions by adjusting the centroids of the uniform models. Through a trial
and error approach, the slip models are relocated, shown as black empty rectangles in Figures 11a–11c. In
the relocating process, we only attempt to fit very few tsunami data, so the location of the slip model may not
be well determined. For the 2007 Pisco earthquake, Hébert et al. (2009) presented a finite-fault model with
a larger rupture area (approximately 100 × 100 km) near the gCMT centroid; for the 2010 Maule earthquake,
Yue et al. (2014) and Yoshimoto et al. (2016) derived finite-fault models with major slip located to the north
of the gCMT centroid, which agree well with our corrected uniform slip model; for the 2013 Santa Cruz earth-
quake, Heidarzadeh et al. (2016) obtained a finite-fault model near the gCMT centroid. It is observed from our
results in Figure 11 that the relocated uniform models can well reproduce the tsunami recordings, in terms
of both arrival time and wave amplitude. This shows that ignoring the slip heterogeneity of an earthquake
can still lead to acceptable tsunami predictions, although the location of the corrected uniform model is not
necessarily associated with the gCMT centroid.
Thus, from the six tsunami events investigated in this study, uniform slip models derived from the optimum
scaling relation and length/width ratio lead to reasonably good tsunami predictions. In other words, ignor-
ing earthquake rupture details does not cause significant tsunami prediction errors. On the other hand, the
location of the uniform slip models seems not to be closely related to earthquake focal mechanism. Among
the six studied earthquakes, it is acceptable to adopt the gCMT centroid for three of them (2011 Tohoku, 2014
Iquique, and 2015 Illapel), but errors are significant for the other three (2007 Pisco, 2010 Maule, and 2013
Santa Cruz Islands), particularly the former two events. Meanwhile, it is still challenging to determine the loca-
tion of the major slip area based on limited information. Epicenters are associated with the initial rupture of
earthquakes. Centroid moment tensor solutions are derived from low-frequency seismic waves and hence
have a better chance to represent the static slip on the fault. But neither of them are directly related to the
final slip distribution that determines the tsunami generation. Our results show that, for some earthquakes,
the gCMT centroid can also be far off the major slip area. Therefore, further seismological research on rapid
determination of slip location will greatly contribute to tsunami warning strategies.
AN ET AL. 8379
Figure 11. Application of uniform slip models to the 2007 Pisco, Peru earthquake; the 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake;
and the 2013 Santa Cruz Islands, Solomon earthquake. In each panel of (a) to (c), the red-filled rectangles are the
uniform slip models constructed from optimum scaling relation and rupture length/width ratio, located at the gCMT
centroids; black empty rectangles show the relocated uniform slip models by a trial and error approach; inset panels
display the tsunami data and predictions. gCMT = global Centroid Moment Tensor; USGS = U.S. Geological Survey.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we investigated the capability of uniform slip models to predict tsunami waves for the 2011
Tohoku, 2014 Iquique, and 2015 Illapel earthquakes. By comparison between finite-fault models constrained
mainly from tsunami data and optimum uniform slip models from global searching, we conclude that for those
three earthquakes, the optimum uniform slip models lead to equally good predictions of tsunami waves as
the finite-fault models, with similar wave amplitude and arrival time. Hence, for tsunami warning purposes,
especially for far-field areas, it is likely that using uniform slip models only causes negligible prediction errors.
We further examined the common relation between the earthquake moment and rupture area. For the three
2∕3
thrust fault earthquakes, the scaling is determined to be S = 2.89 × 10−11 M0 (S rupture area in square kilo-
meter and M0 earthquake moment in Newton meter). This scaling is very close to the scaling between asperity
size and earthquake moment derived by Murotani et al. (2013) from more giant subduction earthquakes,
which has a coefficient of 2.81 × 10−11 . Additionally, the common rupture length/width ratio is found to be
AN ET AL. 8380
1.0 for the three earthquakes. We note again that the rupture area, length, and width defined in this studied
are the proxy ones for prediction tsunami waves, instead of the actual rupture properties. The location of the
rupture is tested against the gCMT centroid. It is demonstrated that by simply locating the center of the rup-
ture at the gCMT centroid, the resulted prediction errors of tsunami waves are reasonably small for tsunami
warning purposes. Thus, a uniform slip model can be constructed according to the earthquake moment mag-
nitude Mw (Mw = (log M0 − 9.1)∕1.5), with the rupture area, length, and width determined from the scaling
relations and the slip d determined by M0 = 𝜇Sd (𝜇 Earth rigidity). The orientation of the rupture can be
extracted from the local slab geometry, and the center is simply the gCMT centroid.
By applying the above methodology to three more tsunami events—the 2007 Pisco, Peru earthquake
(Mw 8.0), the 2010 Maule, Chile earthquake (Mw 8.8), and the 2013 Santa Cruz Islands, Solomon earthquake
(Mw 7.9), it is found that the uniform slip models can well reproduce the tsunami data, but the centroids
have to be adjusted through a trial and error approach. Therefore, for all the six investigated tsunami events,
uniform slip models constructed from optimum scaling relations and length/width ratio can be adopted to
predict tsunami waves. For three of the six earthquakes, the gCMT centroid can be used to estimate the
location of the uniform slip models. Further research is necessary on the rapid derivation of the major slip
location.
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JGR Oceans - 2018 - An - Prediction of Tsunami Waves by Uniform Slip Models

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Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans

RESEARCH ARTICLE Prediction of Tsunami Waves by Uniform Slip Models

Chao An1 , Hua Liu1 , Zhiyuan Ren2 , and Ye Yuan2

2. Optimum Uniform Slip Models

3. Common Parameters and Location of Uniform Slip Models

2∕3 Fault Length L

4. Discussion: Application to Other Tsunami Events

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