The importance of west verging structures at the western flank of the Andes, parallel to the subduction zone, appears currently minimized. This hampers our understanding of the Andes‐Altiplano, one of the most significant mountain belts on Earth. We analyze a key tectonic section of the Andes at latitude 33.5°S, where the belt is in an early stage of its evolution, with the aim of resolving the primary architecture of the orogen. We focus on the active fault propagation–fold system in the Andean cover behind the San Ramón Fault, which is critical for the seismic hazard in the city of Santiago and crucial to decipher the structure of the West Andean Thrust (WAT). The San Ramón Fault is a thrust ramp at the front of a basal detachment with average slip rate of ∼0.4 mm/yr. Young scarps at various scales imply plausible seismic events up to Mw 7.4. The WAT steps down eastward from the San Ramón Fault, crossing 12 km of Andean cover to root beneath the Frontal Cordillera basement anticline, a range ∼5 km high and >700 km long. We propose a first‐order tectonic model of the Andes involving an embryonic intracontinental subduction consistent with geological and geophysical observations. The stage of primary westward vergence with dominance of the WAT at 33.5°S is evolving into a doubly vergent configuration. A growth model for the WAT‐Altiplano similar to the Himalaya‐Tibet is deduced.Wesuggest that the intracontinental subduction at theWAT is amechanical substitute of a collision zone, rendering the Andean orogeny paradigm obsolete.Our work has been supported by the binational French‐Chilean ECOS‐Conicyt program (project C98U02), the French Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, Project Sub Chile (ANR‐05‐ CATT‐014), and the Chilean ICM project “Millennium Science Nucleus of Seismotectonics and Seismic Hazard,

International audienceClimate and ocean ecosystem variability has been well recognized during the twentieth century but it is unclear if modern ocean biogeochemistry is susceptible to the large, abrupt shifts that characterized the Late Quaternary. Time series from marine sediments off Peru show an abrupt centennial-scale biogeochemical regime shift in the early nineteenth century, of much greater magnitude and duration than present day multi-decadal variability. A rapid expansion of the subsurface nutrient-rich, oxygen-depleted waters resulted in the present-day higher biological productivity, including pelagic fish. The shift was likely driven by a northward migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone and the South Pacific Subtropical High to their present day locations, coupled with a strengthening of Walker circulation, towards the end of the Little Ice Age. These findings reveal the potential for large reorganizations in tropical Pacific climate with immediate effects on ocean biogeochemical cycling and ecosystem structure

We reconstructed a high‐resolution, alkenone‐based sea surface temperature (SST) record spanning the last ca. 150 years, from a sediment core retrieved within the main upwelling zone off Peru. A conspicuous SST decline is evidenced since the 1950s despite interdecadal SST variability. Instrumental SST data and reanalysis of ECMWF ERA 40 winds suggest that the recent coastal cooling corresponds mainly to an intensification of alongshore winds and associated increase of upwelling in spring. Consistently, both proxy and instrumental data evidence increased productivity in phase with the SST cooling. Our data expand on previous reports on recent SST cooling in other Eastern Boundary upwelling systems and support scenarios that relate coastal upwelling intensification to global warming. Yet, further investigations are needed to assess the role of different mechanisms and forcings (enhanced local winds vs. spin‐up of the South Pacific High Pressure cell).

The 2015 Mw8.3 Illapel, Chile earthquake is the latest megathrust event on the central segment of that subduction zone. It generated strong ground motions and a large (up to 11 m runup) tsunami which prompted the evacuation of more than 1 million people in the first hours following the event. Observations during recent earthquakes suggest that these phenomena can be associated with rupture on different parts of the megathrust. The deep portion generates strong shaking while slow, large slip on the shallow fault is responsible for the tsunami. It is unclear whether all megathrusts can have shallow slip during coseismic rupture and what physical properties regulate this. Here we show that the Illapel event ruptured both deep and shallow segments with substantial slip. We resolve a kinematic slip model using regional geophysical observations and analyze it jointly with teleseismic backprojection. We find that the shallow and deep portions of the megathrust are segmented and have fundamentally different behavior. We forward calculate local tsunami propagation from the resolved slip and find good agreement with field measurements, independently validating the slip model. These results show that the central portion of the Chilean subduction zone has accumulated a significant shallow slip deficit and indicates that, given enough time, shallow slip might be possible everywhere along the subduction zone.

We observed vertically displaced coastal and river markers after the 27 February 2010 Chilean earthquake [moment magnitude (Mw) 8.8]. Land-level changes range between 2.5 and -1 meters, evident along an approximately 500-kilometers-long segment identified here as the maximum length of coseismic rupture. A hinge line located 120 kilometers from the trench separates uplifted areas, to the west, from subsided regions. A simple elastic dislocation model fits these observations well; model parameters give a similar seismic moment to seismological estimates and suggest that most of the plate convergence since the 1835 great earthquake was elastically stored and then released during this event.