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SEISMOLOGY

Supershear tsunami disaster

Nature Geoscience volume 12, pages 150–151 (2019)Cite this article

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A magnitude 7.5 strike-slip earthquake that struck Palu, Indonesia, in 2018 unexpectedly generated a devastating tsunami. Seismic data reveal that its rupture propagated fast, at supershear speed. Whether the two are connected remains to be seen.

The depth of faulting in crustal strike-slip earthquakes, for which ground displacements are largely horizontal, is typically no deeper than 10–20 km depending on the tectonic region. Very large strike-slip ruptures with magnitudes over 7.2 and rupture lengths above 100 km are rare. Rupture speeds are generally below the shear wave speed, where the theoretical limiting speed is the Rayleigh wave speed of 92% of shear wave speed. Seismological observations of supershear ruptures are limited, but for a few strike-slip earthquakes, locally occurring supershear rupture speed has been inferred3,4,5,6,7. Laboratory experiments and numerical simulations have generated supershear ruptures under controlled stress and friction conditions8,9,10,11,12, but their occurrence may be restricted to geometrically simple, smooth segments along a fault13. Nonetheless, supershear ruptures are rare.

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  1. Faculty of Earth Sciences, Division of Physical Sciences and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    P. Martin Mai

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  1. P. Martin Mai
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Correspondence to P. Martin Mai.

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Mai, P.M. Supershear tsunami disaster. Nat. Geosci. 12, 150–151 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0308-8

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