Ambient seafloor noise excited by earthquakes in the Nankai subduction zone

Takashi Tonegawa (), Yoshio Fukao, Tsutomu Takahashi, Koichiro Obana, Shuichi Kodaira and Yoshiyuki Kaneda
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Takashi Tonegawa: Research and Development Center for Earthquake and Tsunami, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Yoshio Fukao: Research and Development Center for Earthquake and Tsunami, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Tsutomu Takahashi: Research and Development Center for Earthquake and Tsunami, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Koichiro Obana: Research and Development Center for Earthquake and Tsunami, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Shuichi Kodaira: Research and Development Center for Earthquake and Tsunami, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Yoshiyuki Kaneda: Disaster Mitigation Research Center, Nagoya University

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Excitations of seismic background noises are mostly related to fluid disturbances in the atmosphere, ocean and the solid Earth. Earthquakes have not been considered as a stationary excitation source because they occur intermittently. Here we report that acoustic-coupled Rayleigh waves (at 0.7–2.0 Hz) travelling in the ocean and marine sediments, retrieved by correlating ambient noise on a hydrophone array deployed through a shallow to deep seafloor (100–4,800 m) across the Nankai Trough, Japan, are incessantly excited by nearby small earthquakes. The observed cross-correlation functions and 2D numerical simulations for wave propagation through a laterally heterogeneous ocean–crust system show that, in a subduction zone, energetic wave sources are located primarily under the seafloor in directions consistent with nearby seismicity, and secondarily in the ocean. Short-period background noise in the ocean–crust system in the Nankai subduction zone is mainly attributed to ocean-acoustic Rayleigh waves of earthquake origin.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7132

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