Supershear Rupture During the 2021 MW 7.4 Maduo, China, Earthquake

Combined with the multi‐array back‐projection and finite‐fault joint inversion methods, we investigate the detailed spatiotemporal rupture complexity of the 2021 MW 7.4 Maduo earthquake using seismic and geodetic data. Our results reveal that this earthquake ruptured bilaterally 170 km long fault segments with a duration of 38 s. The obtained back‐projection results, specific aftershock signature of the supershear earthquake, and observations of far‐field Love Mach waves consistently validate that this earthquake is a supershear event. Furthermore, by analyzing global large strike‐slip earthquakes, we find that the moment‐scaled radiated energies of previously well confirmed supershear earthquakes with relatively simple fault geometries are similar to that of the 2021 MW 7.4 Maduo earthquake, which are significantly smaller than those of subshear strike‐slip events. This new finding provides additional supporting evidence to validate the supershear rupture during the 2021 MW 7.4 Maduo earthquake.