The 6 February 2023, M_w 7.8 Pazarcık earthquake in the Turkey-Syria border region raises the question of whether such a large earthquake could have been foreseen, as well as what is the maximum possible magnitude (M_max) of earthquakes on the East Anatolian Fault (EAF) system and on continental transform faults in general. To answer such questions, knowledge of past earthquakes and of their causative faults is necessary. Here, we integrate data from historical seismology, paleoseismology, archeoseismology, and remote sensing to identify the likely source faults of fourteen M_w ≥ 7 earthquakes between 1000 CE and the present in the region. We find that the 2023 Pazarcık earthquake could have been foreseen in terms of location (the EAF) and timing (an earthquake along this fault was if anything overdue), but not magnitude. We hypothesize that the maximum earthquake magnitude for the EAF is in fact 8.2, that is, a single end-to-end rupture of the entire fault, and that the 2023 Pazarcık earthquake did not reach M_max by a fortuitous combination of circumstances. We conclude that such unusually large events are hard to model in terms of recurrence intervals, and that seismic hazard assessment along continental transforms cannot be done on individual fault systems but must include neighboring systems as well, because they are not kinematically independent at any time scale.

中文翻译：

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公元 1000 年至今土耳其-叙利亚边境地区大地震震源断层的识别及其与 2023 年 7.8 级帕扎尔奇克地震的相关性

2023 年 2 月 6 日，土耳其-叙利亚边境地区发生的7.8_级帕扎尔奇克地震引发了这样一个问题：是否可以预见到如此大的地震，以及东安纳托利亚地震的最大可能震级 ( M _max ) 是多少？断层（EAF）系统和一般大陆转换断层。要回答这些问题，需要了解过去的地震及其引发的断层。 在这里，我们整合了历史地震学、古地震学、考古地震学和遥感数据，以确定从公元 1000 年至今该地区14 次M _w ≥ 7 地震的可能震源断层。我们发现，2023 年帕扎尔茨克地震可以在位置（EAF）和时间（沿着该断层发生的地震如果有的话）上进行预测，但震级却无法预测。我们假设 EAF 的最大地震震级实际上为 8.2 级，即整个断层的一次端到端破裂，并且由于多种情况的偶然组合， 2023 年帕扎尔奇克地震并未达到M _{max 。}我们的结论是，这种异常大的事件很难根据重现间隔进行建模，并且沿着大陆变换的地震危险评估不能在单个断层系统上进行，而必须包括邻近的系统，因为它们在任何时间尺度上都不是运动学独立的。