Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Geophysics and Seismology
A retrodictive theory of the origin of the Moon: a secondary circumterrestrial disk redistributed by the retrograde flyby of a rocky planet
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Astrophysics and Astronomy, Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geochemistry, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences, The Sun and the Solar System
The Moon is a datum, and the question is retrodictive: which physical pathways lead to it without a giant impact? The pathway examined starts from a young, hot proto-Earth, soft but never liquid, flattened and inflated by a 6 h rotation, surrounded by a disk of material that has not yet formed a satellite. A second rocky planet, planet B, passes close to the Earth against its rotation, without [...]
Robust clustering of variable-duration seismic waveforms using an incremental dynamic time warping framework
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology
Different geophysical processes generate characteristic seismic waveforms. Identifying similar waveforms therefore helps to distinguish between different source mechanisms and to monitor seismic activity in settings ranging from volcanoes and glaciers to urban environments. In many applications, however, the seismic event types are unknown and no labelled training data is available. Then, [...]
3D inversions of magnetic and gravity data for the Yaouré region, Ivory Coast: a greenstone belt characterization
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology
We carried out 3D inverse modeling of full tensor gravity gradiometry data, its derived products (Tz and Tz residual), and magnetic data to recover the density and magnetic susceptibility distributions of the Yaouré Greenstone Belt in Ivory Coast, West Africa. The study area presents significant challenges: it lacks well-defined stratigraphy and structural measurements, and it lies close to the [...]
A static arrest criterion classifies some fault-spanning ruptures as arrested
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A static arrest length and a fully dynamic rupture are compared, one rupture at a time, for 60 antiplane and 60 in-plane cases on one 120 km fault with linear slip weakening and one correlation length of the initial stress. The standard deviations were fixed before those ruptures were drawn. The comparison tests the rule, used to build earthquake populations, that a rupture stops where its static [...]
Development of a Combined Detection and Relocation Workflow (TM2DD) to Characterize Escalating Hydraulic Fracturing Induced Seismicity in the Karnes Trough Fault Zone of the Eagle Ford Shale Play, Texas
Published: 2026-10-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology
On January 30, 2025, an M4.7 earthquake shook the Eagle Ford Shale, Texas, the region's second M4 event in under eighteen months. Unlike much of the central United States, where induced seismicity stems from wastewater disposal, most of the earthquakes in the Eagle Ford are linked to hydraulic fracturing (HF) (Fasola et al., 2019; Fasola & Brudzinski, 2023). If HF-induced, the 2025 event [...]
Fitful but sustained rupture of the 2026 Mw 7.6 Venezuela earthquake
Published: 2026-10-19
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The devastating 2026 Venezuela earthquake was cataloged as a doublet of \Mw~7.2 and 7.5 events. Combining NISAR and ALOS-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar data, teleseismic source imaging, and ensemble Kalman inversion of multiple moment tensors and dynamic rupture simulations, we show that the 2026 Venezuela earthquake was instead a single \Mw~7.6 event with variable rupture speed and seismic moment [...]
Semi-analytic reference solutions for 3D controlled-source electromagnetics: a conductive sphere beneath Gaussian topography in a layered earth
Published: 2026-10-18
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology
Three-dimensional forward codes for controlled-source and transient electromagnetics are verified mostly by comparison with one another when the model contains topography and a compact body in a layered host. We present terrasphere_csem, an open-source semi-analytic reference for this coupled problem. A Gaussian hill or depression forms the surface of a horizontally layered earth, and a [...]
Earth's Bad Decades: A Sedimentary Record of the Chicxulub Aftermath from the New Jersey Coastal Plain and Offshore
Published: 2026-10-16
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Sedimentology, Stratigraphy
The New Jersey Coastal Plain (NJCP) preserves records of the Chicxulub impact approximately 2,500 km from the crater, providing a unique archive of ejecta fallout, sediment reworking, ecological disruption, and recovery following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Preservation of impact deposits varies with depositional setting. Offshore sections beneath the NJ continental shelf and slope [...]
Along-strike stress delays the ordering of slip on a fixed-length fault
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The size of a large earthquake depends on how far the rupture runs and how much the fault slips. An early correlation with magnitude can appear while those two contributions are still mixed. Patches at both ends stop every rupture on a 120 km fault, so the length no longer varies and the early order is an order of slip. One background stress is a single value along the fault, and the other also [...]
Evaluating Dynamic Viability of Finite-Fault Slip Models with Ensemble Kalman Inversion
Published: 2026-10-12
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Finite-fault slip models are widely used to infer earthquake rupture processes, yet they are inherently non-unique and do not guarantee physically consistent rupture evolution. Here, we develop a data-constrained framework that couples Ensemble Kalman Inversion (EKI) with large-scale 3D dynamic rupture simulations to efficiently evaluate the dynamic viability of finite-fault slip models. The [...]
A thermodynamically consistent theory of multicomponent porous media: finite-deformation mechanics, compositional flow, electrostatics, reactions, and phase transformations
Published: 2026-10-10
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Hydrology, Petroleum Engineering
Reactive reservoir models must combine compositional flow, deformation, electrostatics, chemical reactions, and phase transformations without losing the thermodynamic origin of each term. This paper develops such a theory for multicomponent, multiphase porous media at finite deformation. Component mass conservation is first written on phase-attached material regions and then volume averaged, [...]
A scaling law for stagnant-lid convection with composite visco-elasto-plastic rheology: application to Europa's ice shell
Published: 2026-10-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Planetary Geology, Planetary Sciences, Tectonics and Structure
Scaling laws relating the Nusselt number (Nu) and the Rayleigh number (Ra) are the standard tool for translating numerical models of convection into predictions of surface heat flux and the thicknesses of the stagnant lid and the rheological sublayer. Existing scaling frameworks for icy moons normalise this relationship using a temperature-dependence parameter, γ, calibrated against viscous and [...]
Understanding Earthquake Physics with On-Fault Observatories
Published: 2026-10-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geology, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Earthquakes often strike without warning. Current fault monitoring infrastructure is not sensitive enough to detect signals such as accelerating fault creep or dilation, which laboratory experiments and numerical models predict may precede large earthquakes. Here we argue that a paradigm shift is needed and technically achievable: from inferring faulting processes from a distance with surface [...]
Earthquake damage mapping from Sentinel-1 modeling against coherence damage proxy
Published: 2026-09-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
This paper tests whether a supervised model that uses the same Sentinel-1 signal as the coherence damage proxy can rank earthquake damage better than the proxy itself. Damage grades from Copernicus EMS for four earthquakes are joined to 783 635 OpenStreet- Map footprints over 28 assessed areas, and the coherence drop is aggregated to buildings, morphological blocks and cells of 50 m to 400 m. A [...]
Propagation of the Storegga tsunami in the southeastern North Sea
Published: 2026-09-28
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Numerical simulations of the 8150 BP Storegga slide event in the Norwegian Sea are necessary for understanding both landslide dynamics and tsunami propagation. Here we focus on the southern North Sea, South East of Dogger Bank, and the shores of Denmark and Germany where there have been reports of Storegga tsunami deposits. We simulate the slide using a recently developed cohesive landslide model [...]