Great Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake of 26 December 2004

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 308; no. 5725; pp. 1127 - 1133
• Main Authors: Lay, Thorne, Kanamori, Hiroo, Ammon, Charles J, Nettles, Meredith, Ward, Steven N, Aster, Richard C, Beck, Susan L, Bilek, Susan L, Brudzinski, Michael R, Butler, Rhett, DeShon, Heather R, Ekström, Göran, Satake, Kenji, Sipkin, Stuart
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Association for the Advancement of Science 20-05-2005; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Astronomical magnitude; Earth; Earthquake damage; Earthquakes; Geometry; Indian Ocean; International Organizations; Marine; Natural history; Plate tectonics; Seismic waves; Seismographs; Seismology; Subduction zones; Tectonic plate interactions; Tidal waves; Tsunamis; Indian Ocean; Sumatra; Andaman Islands; Indonesia; Eurasian Plate; Australian Plate; ISW, India, Andaman and Nicobar Is; ISEW, Indonesia, Sumatera
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.1112250

The two largest earthquakes of the past 40 years ruptured a 1600-kilometer-long portion of the fault boundary between the Indo-Australian and southeastern Eurasian plates on 26 December 2004 [seismic moment magnitude (M[subscript w]) = 9.1 to 9.3] and 28 March 2005 (M[subscript w] = 8.6). The first event generated a tsunami that caused more than 283,000 deaths. Fault slip of up to 15 meters occurred near Banda Aceh, Sumatra, but to the north, along the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, rapid slip was much smaller. Tsunami and geodetic observations indicate that additional slow slip occurred in the north over a time scale of 50 minutes or longer.