Rayleigh Wave Attenuation and Amplification Measured at Ocean-Bottom
Seismometer Arrays using Helmholtz Tomography
Abstract
Shear attenuation provides insights into the physical and chemical state
of the upper mantle. Yet, observations of attenuation are infrequent in
the oceans, despite recent proliferation of arrays of ocean-bottom
seismometers (OBS). Studies of attenuation in marine environments must
overcome unique challenges associated with strong oceanographic noise at
the seafloor and data loss during OBS recovery in addition to untangling
the competing influences of elastic focusing, local site amplification,
and anelastic attenuation on surface-wave amplitudes. We apply Helmholtz
tomography to OBS data to simultaneously resolve Rayleigh wave
attenuation and site amplification at periods of 20-150 s. The approach
explicitly accounts for elastic focusing and defocusing due to lateral
velocity heterogeneity using wavefield curvature. We validate the
approach using realistic wavefield simulations at the NoMelt Experiment
and Juan de Fuca (JdF) plate, which represent endmember open-ocean and
coastline-adjacent environments, respectively. Focusing corrections are
successfully recovered at both OBS arrays, including at periods
< 35 s at JdF where coastline effects result in strong
multipathing. When applied to real data, our observations of Rayleigh
wave attenuation at NoMelt and JdF revise previous estimates. At NoMelt,
we observe a low attenuation lithospheric layer (Qμ > 1500)
overlying a highly attenuating asthenospheric layer (Qμ
~ 50-70). At JdF, we find a broad peak in attenuation
(Qμ ~ 50-60) centered at a depth of 100-130 km. We also
report strong local site amplification at the JdF Ridge
(>10% at 31 s period), which can be used to refine models
of crust and shallow mantle structure.