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Published Online May 19, 2005
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1113746

Reports

Submitted on April 18, 2005
Accepted on May 10, 2005

The Size and Duration of the Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake from Far-Field Static Offsets

Paramesh Banerjee 1, Fred F. Pollitz 2, Roland Bürgmann 3*

1 Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehra Dun, 248001, India.
2 U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
3 Department of Earth and Planetary Science and Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Roland Bürgmann , E-mail: burgmann{at}seismo.berkeley.edu

The 26 December 2004 Sumatra earthquake produced static offsets at continuously operating GPS stations at distances of up to 4500 km from the epicenter. We used these displacements to model the earthquake, and include consideration of the Earth's shape and depth-varying rigidity. The results imply that the average slip was >5 m along the full length of the rupture, including the ~650-km-long Andaman segment. Comparison of the source derived from the far-field static offsets with seismically derived estimates suggests that 25 to 35% of the total moment release occurred at periods greater than 1 hour. Taking into consideration the strong dip-dependence of moment estimates, the magnitude of the earthquake did not exceed Mw = 9.2.


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