[S-SS04] Seismological advances in the ocean

[SSS04-02] Noise on Seafloor Seismic Instrumentation: Observations and New Directions

★Invited Papers

*Helen A Janiszewski¹, Joshua Russell², Charles Hoots¹, Elliona Maso¹ (1.University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2.Syracuse University)

Keywords:ocean bottom seismology, ambient noise, marine geophysics

The proliferation of broadband ocean bottom seismometer (BBOBS) deployments has generated key datasets from diverse marine environments, improving our understanding of otherwise inaccessible ocean basin structure, and earthquake processes occurring at the plate boundaries. Recent development of community software has made these datasets more accessible and, in turn, the community of scientists using this data has expanded. New seismic seafloor technologies, including a variety of cabled systems, along with sustained scientific interest in marine and amphibious (shoreline crossing) targets, motivates development of effective data assessment and analysis methodologies. The noise inherent in BBOBS data poses a challenge that is markedly different from that of terrestrial data. Sources of noise on the seafloor, the degree to which they couple to the seismometer housing, and their variation with seafloor environment are often not well understood. Here, we leverage data from recent U.S.-led BBOBS deployments to present three case studies: (1) an evaluation of the variability in ambient noise cross-correlation functions across different oceanic environments and instrumentation; (2) a comparison of noise on free-fall BBOBS to those installed on cabled systems; (3) a comparison of relatively novel denoising techniques to traditional tilt and compliance removal methods.