Measuring Group Velocity in Seismic Noise Correlation Studies Based on Phase Coherence and Resampling Strategies
Abstract: Seismic noise cross correlation studies are of increasing importance in the seismological research community due to the ubiquity of noise sources and advances on how to use the seismic noise wave field for structural imaging and monitoring purposes. Stacks of noise cross correlations are now routinely used to extract empirical Green's functions between station pairs. In regional and global scale studies, mostly surface waves are extracted due to their dominance in seismic noise wave fields. Group arrival ti times mes measured from the time-frequency time representation of frequency dispersive surface waves are further used in tomographic inversions to image seismic structure. Often, the group arrivals are not clearly identified or ambiguous depending on the signal and noise n characteristics. Here, we present a procedure to robustly measure group velocities using the time time-frequency domain phase-weighted weighted stack (PWS) combined with data resampling and decision strategies. The time time-frequency frequency PWS improves signal extraction thro through ugh incoherent signal attenuation during the stack of the noise cross correlations. Resampling strategies help to identify signals robust against data variations and to assess their errors. We have gathered these ingredients in an algorithm where the decis decision ion strategies and tuning parameters are reduced for semiautomated processing schemes. Our numerical and field data examples show a robust assignment of surface surface-wave wave group arrivals. The method