Abstract
We apply seismic interferometry to earthquake records to investigate temporal change of near-surface shear wave velocity associated with rainfall in Northeast Honshu, Japan. We observe there exists a threshold (around 100 mm of 24 h rainfall total) of the temporal influence of rainfall on near-surface shear wave velocity. The velocity does not change significantly under low-intensity rainfall, while it is reduced by 1–3% with one exception of 10% when the rainfall intensity exceeds the threshold. Compared with the travel time of no rain, the travel time increment of low-intensity rainfall is no more than 3 × 10−4 s, while that of high-intensity rainfall ranges between 10−3 and 10−2 s. Based on the results of observation, we propose a one-dimensional model to compute the travel time increment, which can give a preliminary estimation of the temporal influence of rainfall on near-surface shear wave velocity.
Highlights
Near-surface shear wave velocity has been recognized as an important mechanical parameter in the fields of earthquake engineering and geophysics
In this paper, we focused on the temporal change of near-surface shear wave velocity associated with rainfall by applying seismic interferometry to strong motion data of seismic vertical arrays
It should be noted that Northeast Honshu is one of the regions with the smallest seasonal seismic velocity changes in Japan, which allows detection of temporal change of seismic velocity associated with rainfall that might be masked by the strong seasonal perturbations in other areas
Summary
Near-surface shear wave velocity has been recognized as an important mechanical parameter in the fields of earthquake engineering and geophysics. It has a wide range of application such as classifying site classes (Borcherdt 1994), evaluating liquefaction potential (Ahmadi and Paydar 2014) and estimating local site response (Choi and Stewart 2005) for seismic design of buildings, structures, and underground utilities (Lee et al 2014). Many researchers have observed change of near-surface velocity caused by strong motion (Hobiger et al 2012; Nakata and Snieder 2011; Niu et al 2008), plate motion (Nakata and Snieder 2012a; Takagi and Okada 2012), volcanic eruption (Brenguier et al 2008, 2011), earth tide (Hillers et al 2015a, b), seasonal variations, including temperature, precipitation, groundwater level; sea level, wind and so on (Clements and Denolle 2018; Meier et al 2010; Richter et al 2014; Sen-Schönfelder and Wegler 2006; Tsai 2011; Wang et al 2017)
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