Epicenter and magnitude of large earthquake determined from high-rate GPS observations: A case study of the 2008 M8.0 Wenchuan earthquake

For earthquake and tsunami early warning and emergency response, the earthquake epicenter and magnitude should be determined rapidly and correctly. Using high-rate GPS observations, we can readily obtain precise and high resolution displacement time series and the seismic waveforms during the earthquake. In this paper, a new algorithm is proposed for estimating the earthquake epicenter and magnitude with the seismic waveforms derived from high-rate GPS data during the earthquake. A case study of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake is conducted from 1 Hz GPS data and the epicenter and magnitude are determined. Compared with the results issued by the China Seismological Bureau, the estimation error of the epicenter and the magnitude is about 12 km and 0.1 magnitude unit, respectively. It has shown that high-rate GPS could be a new tool feasible for estimating the earthquake epicenter and magnitude, independent of or combined with seismometers.