Strong‐Motion and Teleseismic Waveform Inversions for the Source Process of the 2003 Bam, Iran, Earthquake

The Bam earthquake ( M w 6.5) occurred on 26 December 2003 in southeastern Iran, causing a major disaster in the city of Bam. A remarkable vertical peak ground acceleration value of 988  cm/s2 and two horizontal pulses were recorded inside the damaged city. Previous analyses showed that the earthquake was caused by a subsurface rupture on an unknown strike‐slip fault. In this study, we attempt to determine the precise fault location and source process of the 2003 Bam earthquake by performing a multiple‐time‐window linear waveform inversion of teleseismic and strong‐motion data, both individually and jointly. We examined the general features of the fault location and the source process by analyzing the teleseismic displacement waveforms and determined the precise features and fault geometry by inverting the three components of strong‐motion velocity records. The final estimate of the source process of the 2003 Bam earthquake was determined by joint inversion of the datasets. Our results show that a single fault model, characterized by the appropriate location of the hypocenter, rake angle variations, and the Rayleigh‐like speed of the rupture front can satisfactorily explain the three components of the strong‐motion records at BAM station.