Preliminary Investigation into Inversion of 2015 Mw7.8 Nepal Earthquake Based on GPS Data

To explore the potential effect and advantage of near-field high rate GPS data on the real-time inversion of seismic characteristics of large earthquakes, 16 high rate GPS sites, affected by the 2015 Mw 7.8 Nepal earthquake, were utilized independently. The kinematic GPS data processing method, real-time moment tensor inversion algorithm, and trailing variance technique were used to replay the earthquake triggering, real-time centroid and moment tensor inversion, and ending judgement of the event. The problems found during the inversion and in the final results were discussed, and then compared to the GCMT, W-phase, and some already published results. The potential advantage of a GPS real-time displacement field in determining these parameters was explored. The GPS time series shows that, if rupture propagation is in one direction and is from west to southeast, the average speed is about 3.1 km/s and the duration of the event is at least 75 s. All these results are consistent with previously published findings. GPS derived centroid and moment magnitude values are consistent with GCMT and W-phase results and have high stability and reliability.