Ambient seismic noise imaging of the lowermost mantle beneath the North Atlantic Ocean

Lise Retailleau (1, 2) , Pierre Boué (3) , Lei Li (3) , Michel Campillo (3)

1 OVPF - Observatoire Volcanologique du Piton de la Fournaise
2 Department of Geophysics [Stanford]
3 ISTerre - Institut des Sciences de la Terre

Body waves can be extracted from correlation functions computed from seismic records even at teleseismic distances. Here we use P and PcP waves from the secondary microseism frequency band that are propagating between Europe and the Eastern United States to image the core-mantle boundary (CMB) and D" structure beneath the North Atlantic. This study presents the first 3-D image of the lower mantle obtained from ocean-generated microseism data. Robustness of our results is evaluated by comparing images produced by propagation in both directions. Our observations reveal complex patterns of lateral and vertical variations of P-wave reflectivity with a particularly strong anomaly extending upward in the lower mantle up to 2600 km deep. We compare these results with synthetic data and associate this anomaly to a Vp velocity increase above the CMB. Our image aims at promoting the study of the lower mantle with microseism noise excitations.

Keywords: Body waves; Seismic noise; Composition and structure of the mantle; Atlantic Ocean; Time-series analysis

Domains: Geophysics [physics.geo-ph]

Lise Retailleau, Pierre Boué, Lei Li, Michel Campillo. Ambient seismic noise imaging of the lowermost mantle beneath the North Atlantic Ocean. Geophysical Journal International, 2020, 222 (2), pp.1339-1351. ⟨10.1093/gji/ggaa210⟩. ⟨insu-02879285⟩