INVESTIGATING DISCREPANCIES AMONG MEASUREMENTS OF TRAVELING AND STANDING-WAVE ATTENUATION

In studies of long-period (150 s to 300 s) seismic wave attenuation, t he mean decay reported for surface waves is generally 10 to 15% greate r (lower quality factor Q) than that measured from equivalent fundamen tal modes of oscillation. Towards reconciling this inconsistency, we f irst establish through forward modeling that observed waveforms are mo re compatible with the rapid rate of decay inferred from traveling wav e analyses. Second, we apply traveling and standing wave measurement t echniques to a common set of predicted and observed seismograms and co mpare the inferred levels of surface wave attenuation. We demonstrate that the discrepancy documented in the literature is a consequence of the measurement techniques applied and not an effect of the individual data sets used in previous studies. Experiments with synthetically ge nerated seismograms illustrate that the presence of noise elevates the mean Q inferred for the standing wave methods considered. This bias i s related to the nonrandom influence of noise on the phase spectrum. H owever, for realistic noise levels, the experiment fails to reproduce the magnitude of the discrepancy present in the literature or observed in this study. The synthetic experiments motivate a new measurement a pproach based on the decrease of spectral power with time that incorpo rates the behavior of noise into the parameterization. When this techn ique is applied to data, the mean observed Q decreases from values con sistent with normal mode studies to values consistent with traveling s urface wave analysis. We thus conclude that noise is the dominant caus e of the discrepancy.