Travel times of P and S from the global digital seismic networks: Implications for the relative variation of P and S velocity in the mantle

Abstract

We present new data sets of P and S arrival times which have been handpicked from long‐period vertical and transverse component recordings of the various global seismic networks. Using events which occurred from 1976 to 1994 results in ∼38,000 globally well‐distributed measurements of teleseismic P and ∼41,000 measurements of S. These data are particularly useful for looking at the relative variation of S and P velocities in the lower mantle. We describe both the measurement techniques and the gross characteristics of the data sets. The size of our data sets allows us to exploit the internal consistency of the data to identify outliers using a summary ray analysis. Since the polarity of each arrival is also known, we can construct fault plane solutions and/or compare with polarities predicted by the Harvard centroid moment tensor solutions to further diagnose phase misidentification. This analysis results in ∼5% of the data being identified as outliers. An analysis of variance indicates that the S residual travel times are dominated by the effects of three‐dimensional structure but the P data have comparable contributions from noise and source mislocation effects. The summary ray analysis reveals the basic character of lower mantle structure, and there are large‐scale patterns in both the S and P data sets that correlate quite well with each other. This analysis suggests that on average, d ln vs/d ln vp is an increasing function of depth in the mantle going from a value of ∼1.7 at the top of the lower mantle to an apparent value of 4 near the base of the mantle. This latter extreme value of R seems to result mainly from data which sample one region in the lowermost mantle under the central Pacific, where large positive S residuals are associated with very small P residuals. Such an anomaly cannot be thermal in origin.