The origin of secondary microseism Love waves

Lucia Gualtieri; Etienne Bachmann; Frederik J Simons; Jeroen Tromp

doi:10.1073/pnas.2013806117

The origin of secondary microseism Love waves

Lucia Gualtieri, Etienne Bachmann, Frederik J Simons, Jeroen Tromp

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

The interaction of ocean surface waves produces pressure fluctuations at the seafloor capable of generating seismic waves in the solid Earth. The accepted mechanism satisfactorily explains secondary microseisms of the Rayleigh type, but it does not justify the presence of transversely polarized Love waves, nevertheless widely observed. An explanation for two-thirds of the worldwide ambient wave field has been wanting for over a century. Using numerical simulations of global-scale seismic wave propagation at unprecedented high frequency, here we explain the origin of secondary microseism Love waves. A small fraction of those is generated by boundary force-splitting at bathymetric inclines, but the majority is generated by the interaction of the seismic wave field with three-dimensional heterogeneity within the Earth.We present evidence for an ergodic model that explains observed seismic wave partitioning, a requirement for full-wave field ambient-noise tomography to account for realistic source distributions.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	29504-29511
Number of pages	8
Journal	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume	117
Issue number	47
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2013806117
State	Published - Nov 9 2020
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2022-06-14
Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): OSR-2016-CRG5-2970-01
Acknowledgements: We thank Congyue Cui for running numerical simulations on the supercomputer Summit at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Bernhard Schuberth for helping with the implementation of the rotation of the motion in SPECFEM3D GLOBE, and Fabrice Ardhuin for making available the output of the ocean wave model. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which greatly improved our manuscript. Plotting and data analysis made use of MATLAB. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, which is a US Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility supported under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Additional computational resources were provided by the Princeton Institute for Computational Science & Engineering. We thank Tariq Alkhalifah and acknowledge funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, grant OSR-2016-CRG5-2970-01.
This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General

Access to Document

10.1073/pnas.2013806117

Cite this

@article{23fcff6be81b4979aa73aeb902958a0c,

title = "The origin of secondary microseism Love waves",

abstract = "The interaction of ocean surface waves produces pressure fluctuations at the seafloor capable of generating seismic waves in the solid Earth. The accepted mechanism satisfactorily explains secondary microseisms of the Rayleigh type, but it does not justify the presence of transversely polarized Love waves, nevertheless widely observed. An explanation for two-thirds of the worldwide ambient wave field has been wanting for over a century. Using numerical simulations of global-scale seismic wave propagation at unprecedented high frequency, here we explain the origin of secondary microseism Love waves. A small fraction of those is generated by boundary force-splitting at bathymetric inclines, but the majority is generated by the interaction of the seismic wave field with three-dimensional heterogeneity within the Earth.We present evidence for an ergodic model that explains observed seismic wave partitioning, a requirement for full-wave field ambient-noise tomography to account for realistic source distributions.",

author = "Lucia Gualtieri and Etienne Bachmann and Simons, {Frederik J} and Jeroen Tromp",

note = "KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2022-06-14 Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): OSR-2016-CRG5-2970-01 Acknowledgements: We thank Congyue Cui for running numerical simulations on the supercomputer Summit at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Bernhard Schuberth for helping with the implementation of the rotation of the motion in SPECFEM3D GLOBE, and Fabrice Ardhuin for making available the output of the ocean wave model. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which greatly improved our manuscript. Plotting and data analysis made use of MATLAB. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, which is a US Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility supported under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Additional computational resources were provided by the Princeton Institute for Computational Science & Engineering. We thank Tariq Alkhalifah and acknowledge funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, grant OSR-2016-CRG5-2970-01. This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.",

year = "2020",

month = nov,

day = "9",

doi = "10.1073/pnas.2013806117",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "117",

pages = "29504--29511",

journal = "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America",

issn = "1091-6490",

publisher = "National Academy of Sciences",

number = "47",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - The origin of secondary microseism Love waves

AU - Gualtieri, Lucia

AU - Bachmann, Etienne

AU - Simons, Frederik J

AU - Tromp, Jeroen

N1 - KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2022-06-14 Acknowledged KAUST grant number(s): OSR-2016-CRG5-2970-01 Acknowledgements: We thank Congyue Cui for running numerical simulations on the supercomputer Summit at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Bernhard Schuberth for helping with the implementation of the rotation of the motion in SPECFEM3D GLOBE, and Fabrice Ardhuin for making available the output of the ocean wave model. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments, which greatly improved our manuscript. Plotting and data analysis made use of MATLAB. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, which is a US Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility supported under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Additional computational resources were provided by the Princeton Institute for Computational Science & Engineering. We thank Tariq Alkhalifah and acknowledge funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, grant OSR-2016-CRG5-2970-01. This publication acknowledges KAUST support, but has no KAUST affiliated authors.

PY - 2020/11/9

Y1 - 2020/11/9

N2 - The interaction of ocean surface waves produces pressure fluctuations at the seafloor capable of generating seismic waves in the solid Earth. The accepted mechanism satisfactorily explains secondary microseisms of the Rayleigh type, but it does not justify the presence of transversely polarized Love waves, nevertheless widely observed. An explanation for two-thirds of the worldwide ambient wave field has been wanting for over a century. Using numerical simulations of global-scale seismic wave propagation at unprecedented high frequency, here we explain the origin of secondary microseism Love waves. A small fraction of those is generated by boundary force-splitting at bathymetric inclines, but the majority is generated by the interaction of the seismic wave field with three-dimensional heterogeneity within the Earth.We present evidence for an ergodic model that explains observed seismic wave partitioning, a requirement for full-wave field ambient-noise tomography to account for realistic source distributions.

AB - The interaction of ocean surface waves produces pressure fluctuations at the seafloor capable of generating seismic waves in the solid Earth. The accepted mechanism satisfactorily explains secondary microseisms of the Rayleigh type, but it does not justify the presence of transversely polarized Love waves, nevertheless widely observed. An explanation for two-thirds of the worldwide ambient wave field has been wanting for over a century. Using numerical simulations of global-scale seismic wave propagation at unprecedented high frequency, here we explain the origin of secondary microseism Love waves. A small fraction of those is generated by boundary force-splitting at bathymetric inclines, but the majority is generated by the interaction of the seismic wave field with three-dimensional heterogeneity within the Earth.We present evidence for an ergodic model that explains observed seismic wave partitioning, a requirement for full-wave field ambient-noise tomography to account for realistic source distributions.

UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10754/679001

UR - http://www.pnas.org/lookup/doi/10.1073/pnas.2013806117

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096883134&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1073/pnas.2013806117

DO - 10.1073/pnas.2013806117

M3 - Article

C2 - 33168742

SN - 1091-6490

VL - 117

SP - 29504

EP - 29511

JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

IS - 47

ER -

The origin of secondary microseism Love waves

Abstract

Bibliographical note

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this