Attenuation of free spheroidal oscillations of the Earth after the M = 9 Earthquake in Sumatra and the super-deep Earthquake in the Sea of Okhotsk: I. the Admissible Q-factor range for the fundamental mode and overtones of the free spheroidal oscillations

Abstract

The problem of reconstructing the depth distribution of density and the depth and frequency dependences of the mechanical Q-factor in the Earth’s mantle from the entire set of the present-day seismic and astrometric data on the travel times and periods of seismic waves and the amplitudes and phases of forced nutations is considered. The solution of the problem is refined by including the new data about the attenuation of the free oscillations of the Earth excited by the Sumatra earthquake (M = 9) and super-deep earthquake in the Sea of Okhotsk. The actual accuracy of the Q-factor is studied in the first part of the paper. To this end, we analyze (1) the convergence of the Q-factor estimated from the time series of different length shifted along the time axis and (2) the convergence of the results based on the different data. Since the accuracy of identifying all the periods and attenuation factors for the free oscillations from the Sumatra earthquake is significantly higher than for the earthquake with M = 9 in Japan, the data are only compared for the Sumatra and Okhotsk events. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is analyzed based on the records from different Global Seismographic Network (GSN) stations including the station in Obninsk, the Kurchatov station in Kazakhstan, and the main ERM and MAJO stations in Japan. It is found that the highest SNR was observed in Obninsk. The inverse problem of reconstructing the density and Q-factor is solved for the frequency dependent real parts of the shear moduli with allowance for the most accurate data about the attenuation factors for the fundamental spheroidal modes of the free oscillations of the Earth.