Inner Core Rotation Captured by Earthquake Doublets and Twin Stations
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The Earth's solid inner core (IC) is generally believed to rotate relative to the mantle, but the proposal remains controversial. Here we use seven waveform doublets in the South Sandwich Islands region with time lapses of 5.8–17.0 years that are recorded by two close stations in Kyrgyzstan with virtually the same epicentral distance. The fortuitous geometry allows precise measurements of the IC temporal changes and the underlying local structure at the same time. The remarkable observations in waveforms and spatial‐temporal measurements show unequivocally that the IC must have shifted (rotated) eastward in 1991–2010 and help determine accurately the average rotation rate as 0.127 ± 0.006°/yr at 95% confidence level during the time span.
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The average eastward rotation rate of about 0.10°/yr between the 1980s and 2000s is compatible with previous low estimates, including 0.07-0.15°/yr for 1971-1974 and 0.12°/yr between 1991 and 2010.
“which is compatible with the previous low estimates, including 0.07-0.15°/yrfor the time-period of 1971-1974 from IC scattering waves (Vidale, 2019;Vidale et al., 2000;Wang & Vidale, 2022a) and 0.12°/yr between 1991 and 2010 from earthquake doublets and twin stations (Yang & Song, 2022).”
From Pattern of Inner‐Core Differential Rotation From Long‐Term Earthquake Sequences and USArray Network (2026) · cites this paper as Yang & Song, 2022
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Cited by
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Tkalčić, H. (2024) · Geophysical Research Letters · doi:10.1029/2023gl107043 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“Additionally, more recent methods relying on doublets and neighboring (twin) stations (Yang & Song, 2022) provided an opportunity to increase the number of data points in doublet‐based studies.”
MethodPattern of Inner‐Core Differential Rotation From Long‐Term Earthquake Sequences and USArray Network
Wu, K., Song, X., & Yang, Y. (2026) · Geophysical Research Letters · doi:10.1029/2025gl119295 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
“Their estimated rotation rates (relative to the mantle) vary from the order of 1 ° / Myr to 1 ° / yr (Deuss, 2014; Waszek et al., 2011; Yang & Song, 2020a, 2022; Zhang et al., 2005).”
Self-citation
- Authors
- Yang, Y., & Song, X.
- Affiliations
- Peking University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Song, Xiaodong
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2022-06-23
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 12
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W3200228301
- Cited by
- 11
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4
- FWCI
- 1.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (42104096, U1939204)
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M690203)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geophysics › High-pressure geophysics and materials
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geophysics › Seismic Waves and Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geophysics › earthquake and tectonic studies
- Keywords
- inner core rotation, solid inner core, inner core structure, seismic waveform analysis
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