Assessing the short-term clock drift of early broadband stations with burst events of the 26 s persistent and localized microseism. Issue 1 (22nd September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Xie, Jun; Ni, Sidao; Chu, Risheng; Xia, Yingjie
• Is Part Of: Geophysical journal international. Volume 212:Issue 1(2018:Jan.)
• Page Start: 324
• Page End: 332
• Publication Date: 2017-09-22
• Subjects: Seismic Noise -- Seismic Interferometry -- Seismic Instruments; Geophysics -- Periodicals; 550
• DOI: 10.1093/gji/ggx401
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0956-540X

Abstract

Abstract: Accurate seismometer clock plays an important role in seismological studies including earthquake location and tomography. However, some seismic stations may have clock drift larger than 1 s (e.g. GSC in 1992), especially in early days of global seismic networks. The 26 s Persistent Localized (PL) microseism event in the Gulf of Guinea sometime excites strong and coherent signals, and can be used as repeating source for assessing stability of seismometer clocks. Taking station GSC, PAS and PFO in the TERRAscope network as an example, the 26 s PL signal can be easily observed in the ambient noise cross-correlation function between these stations and a remote station OBN with interstation distance about 9700 km. The travel-time variation of this 26 s signal in the ambient noise cross-correlation function is used to infer clock error. A drastic clock error is detected during June 1992 for station GSC, but not found for station PAS and PFO. This short-term clock error is confirmed by both teleseismic and local earthquake records with a magnitude of 25 s. Averaged over the three stations, the accuracy of the ambient noise cross-correlation function method with the 26 s source is about 0.3–0.5 s. Using this PL source, the clock can be validated for historical records of sparsely distributed stations, where the usual ambient noise cross-correlation function of short-period (<20 s) ambient noise might be less effective due to its attenuation over long interstation distances. However, this method suffers from cycling problem, and should be verified by teleseismic/local P waves. Further studies are also needed to investigate whether the 26 s source moves spatially and its effects on clock drift detection.