Signatures of ocean storms on seismic records in South China Sea and East China Sea

Abstract

Ocean storms on seismic records reveal coupling mechanisms between Earth’s spheres. We analyzed temporal and spatial signatures of ocean storms on seismic records in the South China and East China Seas. The main points are: (1) the landing of ocean storms directly influences spectrum amplitudes of microseisms, showing an “increase-peak-decrease” pattern, whereas they exert no direct influence on Earth’s hum and the high-frequency noise; (2) for microseisms, spectrum amplitudes of short-period double-frequency microseisms are increased greatly during ocean storms’ landing, implying that storms preferably excite short-period ocean swells; (3) while the “increase-peak-decrease” pattern of spectrum amplitudes is observed for both short-period double-frequency microseisms and long-period double-frequency microseisms in South China Sea, the peak arrived and disappeared much earlier for long-period double-frequency microseisms, which can be explained by their causal mechanisms; (4) in East China Sea, only the spectrum amplitudes of short-period double-frequency microseisms show an “increase-peak-decrease” pattern and extraordinary spectrum pulses are observed reflecting thick sediments there; (5) spatial features of microseisms revealed from predominant polarization directions indicate that local coastlines play very important roles in deciding where ocean waves impact; (6) high-frequency noise is caused by local offshore wind-generated ocean waves instead of ocean storms; (7) the influence of ocean storm landing processes on microseisms can propagate through continents and is observed at inland stations; (8) seismic motions are excited more efficiently in horizontal directions when ocean waves impact seafloors. Our work clearly exhibits how effectively local ocean events are coupled with the Earth’s lithosphere in Chinese seas.