On the accuracy of long-period Rayleigh waves extracted from ambient noise

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to assess the accuracy of the long-period (50-250 s) surface waves extracted from cross-correlation functions (CCF) of ambient noise. First, we compare waveforms of Empirical Green's functions (EGF) converted from CCF with their synthetics, and also compare seismograms from a ground truth earthquake with their synthetics, through numerical simulations using a common 3-D model. We then quantify the accuracy of EGFs by comparing two sets of time-shifts between the observed waveforms and the synthetics: one set for the ground truth earthquake and the other set for EGFs. Second, we compare Rayleigh wave phase velocity dispersion measurements from ambient noise and those from earthquake data in both global and regional studies. Through these comparisons, we conclude that both the dispersion curves and waveforms from noise data are consistent with their counterparts from earthquake data in the long-period band. The long-period surface waves from ambient noise are as accurate as those from earthquake data, and can be included in both global and regional ambient noise tomography and provide complementary data to constrain the lithospheric and asthenospheric structures.