Felt earthquake on March 4, 2024, Mw=5.0, in the Kyungey-Ala-Too ridge

The paper presents the results of the analysis of instrumental and macroseismic data of the strong Kungey earthquake on March 4, 2024, on the border of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in the Kemin-Chilik fault area. The hypocenter of the earthquake is confined to the focal zone of the catastrophic Kemin earthquake of 1911 with Mw=8.2. The earthquake of March 4, 2024 occurred under the action of submeridional near-horizontal compression, which is typical for the sources of the Northern Tien Shan. The type of motion in the source along the steeply dipping plane NP1 of southwestern strike is a reverse type of motion with a left-sided strike-slip component, along the plane of an eastern strike is a thrust with a right-sided strike-slip component. Before the Kungey earthquake, a ring-shaped seismicity structures formed by earthquakes with depths of up to 33 km, which is a prediction’s factor for strong crustal earthquakes. The earthquake was felt in Almaty (Kazakhstan) and its suburbs with an intensity of 5 points on the MSK-64 scale and had the most significant impact on the megapolis after the Baysorun earthquake of 1990. Data on the macroseismic impact of the Kungey earthquake in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were collected. An analysis of the records of strong motion instruments based on data from Central Asian stations was carried out.