Transient anomaly in fault zone-trapped waves during the preparatory phase of the 6 April 2009, Mw 6.3 L'Aquila earthquake

Abstract

Fault zone-trapped waves generated by repeating earthquakes of the 2009 L'Aquila seismic sequence show a sudden, up to 100% increase of spectral amplitudes 7days before the main shock. The jump occurs 10 to 20h after the ML 4.1, 30 March 2009 largest foreshock. The amplitude increase is accompanied by a loss of waveform coherence in the fault-trapped wave train. Other geophysical and seismological parameters are known to have shown a sudden change after the 30 March foreshock. The concomitance of a consistent change in the fault zone-trapped waves leads us to interpret our observation as due to a sudden temporal variation of the velocity contrast between the fault damage zone and hosting rocks in the focal volume. Fault zone-trapped waves thus provide a refined time resolution for changes occurring near the rupture nucleation, with the indication of a strong variation in 1day. Key Points Amplitudes of fault-trapped waves increase before the 2009 Mw 6.3 main shock The amplitude increase is concomitant with a loss of waveform coherence A finer temporal resolution is reached compared to other parameter changes