Abstract
The shape of earthquake source spectra, traditionally fit by
physics-based models, contains important parameters to constrain rupture
dimension, duration, and geometry. Here we apply machine learning (ML)
to derive single-variable and double-variable data-driven models of
source spectra from 3675 Mw>5.5 global earthquakes,
assuming that the Fourier transform of source time functions well
represent earthquake source spectra below 1 Hz. The single-variable ML
model, in the same degree of freedom as the Brune model, improves the
goodness of fit by 8.5%. Specifically, the ML model fits the data
without systematic bias, whereas the Brune model tends to underestimate
at intermediate frequencies and overestimate at high frequencies. The
latter discrepancy cannot be modelled by increasing the fall-off
exponent in the Brune-type or the Boatwright-type models. The
double-variable ML model is compared to existing double-corner-frequency
models and is found to capture the second-order features such as the
subtle curvature differences around the corner. Our results demonstrate
that unsupervised machine learning can extract hidden global
characteristics of high-dimensional data and provide observational
evidence to amend existing physical models.