Plate-wide deformation before the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake
Crampin, Stuart; Gao, Yuan. 2012 Plate-wide deformation before
the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. Journal of Asian Earth Sciences,
46. 61-69. 10.1016/j.jseaes.2011.10.015Full text not available
from this repository. (Request a copy) Rock is weak to shear-
stress and the energy released by the 26th December, 2004, M ≈
9.2 Sumatra–Andaman Earthquake, the largest earthquake for four
decades, must have accumulated over enormous volumes of crust
and mantle, certainly plate-wide, possibly world-wide. Here we
report evidence for plate-wide stress accumulation. Changes in
seismic shear-wave splitting monitor stress-induced changes in
the geometry of the microcrack distributions in almost all rocks
in the Earth’s crust. Such changes observed in Iceland show
stress-accumulation beginning at least four years before the
Sumatra–Andaman Earthquake. These changes were recognised as
monitoring stress-accumulation before an impending large
earthquake and 10 ‘stress-for