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Improving the Quality of Tidal Gravimetric Recordings
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  • Monika Wilde-Piorko,
  • Przemyslaw Dykowski,
  • Tomasz Olszak,
  • Kamila Karkowska,
  • Marcin Sękowski,
  • Marcin Polkowski
Monika Wilde-Piorko
Institute of Geodesy and Cartography

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Przemyslaw Dykowski
Institute of Geodesy and Cartography
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Tomasz Olszak
Warsaw University of Technology
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Kamila Karkowska
Warsaw University of Technology
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Marcin Sękowski
Institute of Geodesy and Cartography
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Marcin Polkowski
Accenture
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Abstract

This study presents the application of broadband seismic recordings in improving the quality of tidal gravimetric recordings, especially during strong earthquakes. Four sites in Western and Central Europe, where broadband seismometer and tidal gravimeter are collocated, are selected. The data together with transfer functions of instruments from the Black Forest (Germany), Membach (Belgium), and Rochfort (Belgium) are downloaded from the IRIS database. The GWR iGrav-027 superconducting gravimeter is fully operational at the Borowa Gora Geodetic-Geophysical Observatory of the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography (Poland) since late April 2016. Later, the REF-TEK broadband seismometer was installed in the cooperation with the University of Warsaw. The Observatory, also temporally hosts a spring gravimeter, LCR ET-26 (owned by the Warsaw University of Technology). The seismometric and gravimetric signals of high coherence are selected for each site. The complex transfer functions in frequency domain are found by the least square minimization of the seismometric and seismic-corrected gravimetric signal. The transfer functions are calculated when the coherence is significant for two cases: with and without observed earthquake recordings. Next, the estimated transfer functions and the ongoing seismometric recordings are used to improve the quality of tidal gravimetric recordings. The presented method shows a significant reduction of the noise level of gravimetric recordings in a frequency range of seismometer’s operability. In order to obtain reliable models of the Earth’s structure based on analysis of surface waves recorded by tidal gravimeters, the careful estimation of gravimeters’ transfer functions in the seismic frequency range is necessary. The transfer functions of iGrav-027 and ET-26 were determined by the step response method during the experiments in 2018-2019. Now, thanks to the presented research, their quality can be verified. The limitation of this verification can be tested on recordings of Black Forest, Membach and Rochfort with very well-determined and documented transfer functions of tidal gravimeters. This work has been done in the research project No. 2017/27/B/ST10/01600 financed from the funds of the Polish National Science Centre.