Following last Friday's Moroccan earthquake, the WTW
Research Network summarises key details of the event and its
effects so far.
Technical details:
The earthquake struck at 22:11 UTC on Friday 8 September 2023
(23:11 local time, WEST), within the Atlas Mountains in western
Morocco ~70km south-west of Marrakesh and ~135km north-east of
Agadir.
The event was thought to be a low-angle south-westerly
dipping oblique thrust failure of the North Atlas
Fault.
The epicentre was located at 31.064°N 8.391°W, at a
depth of 26km (according to USGS, Morocco's National Institute
of Geophysics suggests depth as shallow as 8km). The event was
thought to be a low-angle south-westerly dipping oblique thrust
(reverse) failure of the North Atlas Fault, within the High Atlas
Range of the African/Nubian plate ~550km south of its boundary with
the Eurasian plate. Due to the complex nature of this fault system
and relative lack of similarly sized earthquakes in this
