Open AccessBias in the estimate of seismic moment tensor by the linear inversion method
Author(s) -
Patton Howard,
Aki Keiiti
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
geophysical journal of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.302
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1365-246X
pISSN - 0016-8009
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-246x.1979.tb02568.x
Subject(s) - inversion (geology) , tensor (intrinsic definition) , multiplicative function , moment tensor , random error , moment (physics) , mathematics , random noise , geology , geodesy , magnitude (astronomy) , seismology , statistics , mathematical analysis , physics , geometry , classical mechanics , astronomy , tectonics
Summary. We investigate the effects of various sources of error on the estimation of the seismic moment tensor using a linear least squares inversion on surface wave complex spectra. A series of numerical experiments involving synthetic data subjected to controlled error contamination are used to demonstrate the effects. Random errors are seen to enter additively or multiplicitively into the complex spectra. We show that random additive errors due to background recording noise do not pose difficulties for recovering reliable estimates of the moment tensor. On the other hand, multiplicative errors from a variety of sources, such as focusing, multipathing, or epicentre mislocation, may lead to significant overestimation or underestimation of the tensor elements and in general cause the estimates to be less reliable.