Effects of the Earth Tide on Earthquake Occurrence

An Approach by Numerical Simulation

Abstract

We conducted a numerical simulation to clarify the effects of the earth tide on earthquake occurrence. In the simulation, fault planes, having different initial stresses, are loaded by constantly increasing tectonic stress and cyclic stress due to the earth tide. Earthquakes are assumed to occur when the shear stress reached a certain threshold level. The result of the simulation indicates that the tidal effect on earthquake occurrence is strongly controlled by the ratio of stress change rate between earth tide and tectonic stress accumulation; earthquakes concentrate near phase angle 0° (maximum tidal stress) when the ratio is large, and they are distributed with a peak around-90° (maximum acceleration of tidal stress) when the ratio is small. This phase selectivity is very similar to the observations of tidetriggered earthquakes reported so far, and rock failure experiments under cyclic loading, suggesting that our approach may provide an important clue for clarifying the physical mechanism of tidal triggerings of earthquakes. Schuster's test has been widely used for detecting tidal effect on earthquake occurrence. However, it is shown by the numerical simulation that the result of a test strongly depends on the size of a data set when earthquakes have phase selectivity by nature, and that Schuster's p-value is not appropriate to represent the strength of tidal effects. Alternatively, we propose to use α, which is the amplitude of a sine curve fitted to the frequency distribution of earthquakes against phase angle, to evaluate the strength of tidal effects. We also emphasize that the effect of ocean loading is an important component of the earth tide, and cannot be neglected in a study of tidal triggerings of earthquakes.