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Letter

Nature Geoscience 1, 679–683 (1 October 2008) | doi:10.1038/ngeo308

Coseismic fluid|[ndash]|rock interactions at high temperatures in the Chelungpu fault

Tsuyoshi Ishikawa , Masaharu Tanimizu , Kazuya Nagaishi , Jun Matsuoka , Osamu Tadai , Masumi Sakaguchi , Tetsuro Hirono , Toshiaki Mishima , Wataru Tanikawa , Weiren Lin , Hiroyuki Kikuta , Wonn Soh & Sheng-Rong Song

Aqueous fluids are thought to have an essential role in faulting and the dynamic propagation of earthquake rupture. Fluid overpressure can affect earthquake nucleation and in a process termed thermal pressurization, pore fluid pressure produced by frictional heating can reduce the effective normal stress acting on the fault surface.