On the location uncertainty of early-instrumental earthquakes
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/seismica.v4i1.1499Keywords:
earthquake location, location uncertainty, observational errorsAbstract
Uncertainty in reported body-wave arrival times is a key contributor to earthquakes location error estimates, especially in the early-instrumental period (e.g., prior to the early 1960s). As such, a reliable assessment of the observational errors in the early-instrumental period is an important element of the earthquake location problem. Standard location procedures at the International Seismological Centre assume seismic arrival time picking errors defined for the most recent decades of instrumental seismology (i.e., from the early 1960s). However, the error measurements currently used fail to capture the uncertainty in the seismic arrival time pickings of earthquakes occurred before the early 1960s (early-instrumental period). The larger observational uncertainty in the early-instrumental period is due to a range of error sources arising from reading arrival times on analogue seismographs. Such errors have been drastically reduced since the 1960s thanks to the significant improvements in seismometry and time keeping as well as the migration from analogue to digital stations worldwide. Since observational errors play a key role in the uncertainty estimations of an earthquake location, it follows that error ellipses for early-instrumental earthquakes are underestimated in our current procedures. To address this feature, we modify the error assumptions used in the early-instrumental period with a time dependent term enabling more reliable error ellipses for early-instrumental earthquakes.
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