The December 26, 2004, off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, M W=9.0, earthquake and the critical-point-like model of earthquake preparation

Long-term seismic activity prior to the December 26, 2004, off the west coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, M _W=9.0 earthquake was investigated using the Harvard CMT catalogue. It is observed that before this great earthquake, there exists an accelerating moment release (AMR) process with the temporal scale of a quarter century and the spatial scale of 1 500 km. Within this spatial range, the M _W=9.0 event falls into the piece-wise power-law-like frequency-magnitude distribution. Therefore, in the perspective of the critical-point-like model of earthquake preparation, the failure to forecast/predict the approaching and/or the size of this earthquake is not due to the physically intrinsic unpredictability of earthquakes. Foundation item: Ministry of Science and Technology Project (2004CB418406). Contribution No. 05FE3010, Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration.