Large Explosions at Sea

1971 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-247
Author(s):  
Goetz G. R. Buchbinder

Two large unannounced events occurred at sea in aseismic areas in the Atlantic. Comparison of these with the announced event Chase III shows them to be explosions.Large explosions at sea may be recognized by the relatively small amplitude of long period surface waves with periods up to 10 s. Energy of longer periods is absent for events mb ≤ 5.5. The surface wave magnitudes for the events are at least 1.5 smaller at 10 s than those of underground explosions of equal mb, at 20 s they are at least 0.9 smaller. At longer periods the difference between body wave and surface wave magnitude is larger than 0.9 but larger explosions are needed to determine the separation. Underwater explosions on or near the continental shelf are very efficient in the generation of higher mode short period waves.

1977 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Hart ◽  
Rhett Butler ◽  
Hiroo Kanamori

abstract Observations of Love and Rayleigh waves on WWSSN and Canadian Network seismograms have been used to place constraints upon the source parameters of the August 1, 1975, Oroville earthquake. The 20-sec surface-wave magnitude is 5.6. The surface-wave radiation pattern is consistent with the fault geometry determined by the body-wave study of Langston and Butler (1976). The seismic moment of this event was determined to be 1.9 × 1025 dyne-cm by both time-domain and long-period (T ≥ 50 sec) spectral amplitude determinations. This moment value is significantly greater than that determined by short-period studies. This difference, together with the low seismic efficiency of this earthquake, indicates that the character of the source is intrinsically different at long periods from those aspects which dominate the shorter-period spectrum.


Geophysics ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Capon ◽  
R. J. Greenfield ◽  
R. T. Lacoss

The results of a series of off‐line signal processing experiments are presented for long‐period data obtained from the Large Aperture Seismic Array (LASA) located in eastern Montana. The signal‐to‐noise ratio gains obtained with maximum‐likelihood processing, as well as other simpler forms of processing, are presented for body‐wave as well as surface‐wave phases. A discussion of the frequency‐wavenumber characteristics of the noise which led to these results is also given. On the basis of these experiments, several recommendations are made concerning optimum long‐period array configurations and on‐line or off‐line processing methods. The usefulness of maximum‐likelihood processing in suppressing an interfering teleseism is demonstrated. An experiment is given in which maximum‐likelihood processing achieved about 20 db suppression of an interfering teleseism, while simpler forms of processing such as beam‐forming obtained about 11 db. The matched filtering of surface waves using chirp waveforms is shown to be highly effective. A useful discriminant for distinguishing between natural seismic events and underground nuclear explosions, using both the long‐period and short‐period data, was found to be the relationship between the surface‐wave and body‐wave magnitudes. Measurements of this discriminant made on events from four tectonic regions of the earth are presented. It is shown that 60 and 100 percent detectability of surface waves for natural seismic events from the Central Asian‐Kurile Islands‐Kamchatka region occurs at about LASA body‐wave magnitudes 4.5 and 4.9, respectively.


1975 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 693-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Otto W. Nuttli ◽  
So Gu Kim

abstract Body-wave magnitudes, mb, and surface-wave magnitudes, MS, were determined for approximately 100 Eurasian events which occurred during the interval August through December 1971. Body-wave magnitudes were determined from 1-sec P waves recorded by WWSSN short-period, vertical-component seismographs at epicentral distances greater than 25°. Surface-wave magnitudes were determined from 20-sec Rayleigh waves recorded by long-period, vertical-component WWSSN and VLPE seismographs. The earthquakes had mb values ranging from 3.6 to 5.7. Of 96 presumed earthquakes studied, 6 lie in or near the explosion portion of an mb:MS plot. The explosion mb:MS curve was obtained from seven Eurasian events which had mb values ranging from 5.0 to 6.2 and MS values from 3.2 to 5.1. All six anomalous earthquakes were located in the interior of Asia, in Tibet, and in Szechwan and Sinkiang provinces of China. In general, oceanmargin earthquakes were found to have more earthquake-like mb:MS values than those occurring in the continental interior. Neither focal depth nor focal mechanism can explain the anomalous events.


1993 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 1167-1183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley B. Woods ◽  
Sharon Kedar ◽  
Donald V. Helmberger

Abstract The mb:MS ratio determined by teleseismic observations has proven to be an effective discriminant, for explosive sources tend to be significantly richer in short-period energy than are earthquakes. Unfortunately, this method is limited by the detection threshold of teleseismic surface waves. However, recent advances in instrumentation allowing low amplitude surface wave measurements coupled with new analytical techniques make it feasible to use regional waveform data to determine the long-period source excitation level of low magnitude events. We propose using the ratio of ML (local magnitude) to M0 (scalar seismic moment) as an analogous regional discriminant. We applied this criterion to a data set of 299 earthquakes and 178 explosions and found that this ratio seems to be diagnostic of source type. For a given M0, the ML of an explosion is more than 0.5 magnitude units larger than that of an earthquake. This separation of populations with respect to source type can be attributed to the fact that ML is a short-period (1 Hz) energy measurement, whereas seismic moment is determined from long-period body wave phases (period > 4 s) and surface waves (10 to 40 sec). Using regional stations with sources 200 to 600 km away, the effective threshold for magnitude measurements for this discriminant is found to be ML = 3.1 for earthquakes and ML = 3.6 for explosions. This method does require the determination of regional crustal models and path calibrations from master events or by other means.


1997 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-122
Author(s):  
Hugues Dufumier ◽  
Jeannot Trampert

Abstract The knowledge of lateral heterogeneities is crucial for path corrections in moment tensor inversions using surface waves. After some attempts to use regionalized Earth models for very long-period surface-wave moment-tensor inversions, recent tomographic Earth models offer the possibility to make short-period path corrections and therefore retrieve more reliable moment tensors for teleseismic earthquakes. First we try to evaluate the precision required for path corrections in comparison with source effects. Some selected Earth models are tested to evaluate how their results compare to those using multiple-frequency filtering techniques. Some real cases illustrate the sensitivity of moment-tensor solutions to the different path corrections, and it appears clearly that regionalized Earth models and tomographic models deduced from long-period data alone (greater than 150 sec) cannot lead to trustworthy broadband moment-tensor inversions. Recent tomographic models using phase velocities at much shorter periods (40 to 200 sec) offer a precision comparable to that of the multiple-frequency filtering technique. Both methods lead to acceptable source mechanisms, using a small number of stations, in more than two cases out of three. The use of recent global tomographic models based upon shorter-period surface waves might thus be a useful alternative to heavy multiple-frequency filtering techniques to automate source studies, especially for rapid determinations using a small number of stations.


1971 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-905 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. B. Freund

Three-dimensional wave propagation in an elastic half space is considered. The half space is traction free on half its boundary, while the remaining part of the boundary is free of shear traction and is constrained against normal displacement by a smooth, rigid barrier. A time-harmonic surface wave, traveling on the traction free part of the surface, is obliquely incident on the edge of the barrier. The amplitude and the phase of the resulting reflected surface wave are determined by means of Laplace transform methods and the Wiener-Hopf technique. Wave propagation in an elastic half space in contact with two rigid, smooth barriers is then considered. The barriers are arranged so that a strip on the surface of uniform width is traction free, which forms a wave guide for surface waves. Results of the surface wave reflection problem are then used to geometrically construct dispersion relations for the propagation of unattenuated guided surface waves in the guiding structure. The rate of decay of body wave disturbances, localized near the edges of the guide, is discussed.


1990 ◽  
Vol 80 (5) ◽  
pp. 1205-1231
Author(s):  
Jiajun Zhang ◽  
Thorne Lay

Abstract Determination of shallow earthquake source mechanisms by inversion of long-period (150 to 300 sec) Rayleigh waves requires epicentral locations with greater accuracy than that provided by routine source locations of the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) and International Seismological Centre (ISC). The effects of epicentral mislocation on such inversions are examined using synthetic calculations as well as actual data for three large Mexican earthquakes. For Rayleigh waves of 150-sec period, an epicentral mislocation of 30 km introduces observed source spectra phase errors of 0.6 radian for stations at opposing azimuths along the source mislocation vector. This is larger than the 0.5-radian azimuthal variation of the phase spectra at the same period for a thrust fault with 15° dip and 24-km depth. The typical landward mislocation of routinely determined epicenters of shallow subduction zone earthquakes causes source moment tensor inversions of long-period Rayleigh waves to predict larger fault dip than indicated by teleseismic P-wave first-motion data. For dip-slip earthquakes, inversions of long-period Rayleigh waves that use an erroneous source location in the down-dip or along-strike directions of a nodal plane, overestimate the strike, dip, and slip of that nodal plane. Inversions of strike-slip earthquakes that utilize an erroneous location along the strike of a nodal plane overestimate the slip of that nodal plane, causing the second nodal plane to dip incorrectly in the direction opposite to the mislocation vector. The effects of epicentral mislocation for earthquakes with 45° dip-slip fault mechanisms are more severe than for events with other fault mechanisms. Existing earth model propagation corrections do not appear to be sufficiently accurate to routinely determine the optimal surface-wave source location without constraints from body-wave information, unless extensive direct path (R1) data are available or empirical path calibrations are performed. However, independent surface-wave and body-wave solutions can be remarkably consistent when the effects of epicentral mislocation are accounted for. This will allow simultaneous unconstrained body-wave and surface-wave inversions to be performed despite the well known difficulties of extracting the complete moment tensor of shallow sources from fundamental modes.


Geophysics ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. R1-R11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dmitry Borisov ◽  
Ryan Modrak ◽  
Fuchun Gao ◽  
Jeroen Tromp

Full-waveform inversion (FWI) is a powerful method for estimating the earth’s material properties. We demonstrate that surface-wave-driven FWI is well-suited to recovering near-surface structures and effective at providing S-wave speed starting models for use in conventional body-wave FWI. Using a synthetic example based on the SEG Advanced Modeling phase II foothills model, we started with an envelope-based objective function to invert for shallow large-scale heterogeneities. Then we used a waveform-difference objective function to obtain a higher-resolution model. To accurately model surface waves in the presence of complex tomography, we used a spectral-element wave-propagation solver. Envelope misfit functions are found to be effective at minimizing cycle-skipping issues in surface-wave inversions, and surface waves themselves are found to be useful for constraining complex near-surface features.


1983 ◽  
Vol 132 ◽  
pp. 395-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen T. Chwang

A porous-wavemaker theory is developed to analyse small-amplitude surface waves on water of finite depth, produced by horizontal oscillations of a porous vertical plate. Analytical solutions in closed forms are obtained for the surface-wave profile, the hydrodynamic-pressure distribution and the total force on the wavemaker. The influence of the wave-effect parameter C and the porous-effect parameter G, both being dimensionless, on the surface waves and on the hydrodynamic pressures is discussed in detail.


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