A magnitude 7.0 normal-fault earthquake occurred in the Solomon Islands on 18 JUly 2015. This earthquake generated a small tsunami. The epicenter was ~40 km to the north of the 6 February 2013 Santa Cruz Mw 8.0 thrust earthquake. We studied these two events and realized that the recent normal-fault earthquake was possibly triggered by the 2013 Santa Cruz thrust earthquake.

In this study we applied tsunami empirical Green’s functions for the first time. Although empirical Green’s functions were applied to earthquakes, they have never been used for tsunamis. This is the first application of empirical Green’s functions for tsunami.

The paper is published in Geophysical Research Letters. See the link here for the full story. Also, the PDF file of the article can be found here.