Earthquake Magnitude Correlations Expose Short-Term Catalog Incompleteness

Abstract The independence of earthquake magnitudes is a fundamental assumption and limitation in earthquake forecasting. To assess its validity, we examine correlations between the magnitude of successive earthquakes. We first investigate the 2019 Ridgecrest foreshock sequence and find a significant magnitude correlation as well as an unusually low Gutenberg–Richter b-value (≈0.7 using moment magnitudes). We demonstrate that these anomalous features are not indicative of a precursory phase, but a consequence of short-term incompleteness (STI) that is not detected by conventional methods to estimate catalog completeness. Synthetic simulations of this sequence support this explanation: imposing STI leads to significant magnitude correlation and biased b-value estimates. Expanding our investigation to seismicity across southern California reveals pervasive magnitude correlation due to STI, not limited to sequences with large earthquakes. Our findings suggest that magnitude correlation is the most effective indicator of STI, rather than a characteristic of the underlying earthquake-generating process.