Tyler L. Storm
Lind S. Gee
Charles R. Hutt
David C. Wilson
Adam T. Ringler
2015
<p>The midband sensitivity of a seismic instrument is one of the fundamental parameters used in published station metadata. Any errors in this value can compromise amplitude estimates in otherwise high-quality data. To estimate an upper bound in the uncertainty of the midband sensitivity for modern broadband instruments, we compare daily microseism (4- to 8-s period) amplitude ratios between the vertical components of colocated broadband sensors across the IRIS/USGS (network code IU) seismic network. We find that the mean of the 145,972 daily ratios used between 2002 and 2013 is 0.9895 with a standard deviation of 0.0231. This suggests that the ratio between instruments shows a small bias and considerable scatter. We also find that these ratios follow a standard normal distribution (<i>R</i><sup> <span>2</span></sup> = 0.95442), which suggests that the midband sensitivity of an instrument has an error of no greater than ±6 % with a 99 % confidence interval. This gives an upper bound on the precision to which we know the sensitivity of a fielded instrument.</p>
application/pdf
10.1007/s10950-014-9467-7
en
Springer
Uncertainty estimates in broadband seismometer sensitivities using microseisms
article