Kinematic rupture scenarios and synthetic displacement data: An example application to the Cascadia subduction zone

Abstract Scenario ruptures and ground motion simulation are important tools for studies of expected earthquake and tsunami hazards during future events. This is particularly important for large ( M w 8+) and very large ( M w 8.5+) events for which observations are still limited. In particular, synthetic waveforms are important to test the response of earthquake and tsunami warning systems to large events. These systems are not often exercised in this manner. We will show an application of the Karhunen‐Loève (K‐L) expansion to generate stochastic slip distributions of large events with an example application to the Cascadia subduction zone. We will discuss how to extend the static slip distributions obtained from the K‐L expansion to produce kinematic rupture models and generate synthetic long‐period displacement data at the sampling rates of traditional Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) stations. We will validate the waveforms produced by this method by comparison to a displacement‐based ground motion prediction equation obtained from GNSS measurements of large earthquakes worldwide.