Antarctic ice-sheet structures retrieved from P-wave coda autocorrelation method and comparisons with two other single-station passive seismic methods

• Published in: Journal of Glaciology
• Main Authors: Peng Yan, Zhiwei Li, Fei Li, Yuande Yang, Weifeng Hao
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press 2020
• Subjects: Antarctic glaciology; glacier geophysics; ice-sheet modeling; ice thickness measurements; seismology; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Meteorology. Climatology; QC851-999; Antarctic; Anet; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet; Journal of Glaciology
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1017/jog.2019.95; https://doaj.org/article/1673c1662b7743b897a0809a74d13f59

Passive seismology is becoming increasingly popular for glacier/ice-sheet structure investigations in Polar regions. Single-station passive seismic methods including P-wave receiver functions (PRFs), horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) and a recently proposed autocorrelation method have been used to retrieve glacier/ice-sheet structures. Despite their successful applications, analysis regarding their detection abilities in different glaciological environments has not been reported. In this study, we compare ice thicknesses and vp/vs ratios obtained from the three methods using data collected at GAMSEIS and POLENET/ANET seismic arrays in Antarctica. Ice thickness estimates derived from the three methods are found to be consistent. Comparisons conducted under various model setups, including those involving tiled layers and sedimentary layers, show that the effectiveness of the autocorrelation method is not superior to the PRF method for retrieving ice-sheet structures. The autocorrelation method however can complement other methods as it only requires a single component seismic record.