Reply to comment by Kawakatsu and Abe on “Nature of the seismic lithosphere‐asthenosphere boundary within normal oceanic mantle from high‐resolution receiver functions”

Kawakatsu and Abe (2016) have highlighted the potential complicating effect of sediment reverberations on the analysis and interpretation of crust and mantle phases inferred from receiver functions analyzed from ocean‐bottom seismograms. In their comment, they identify resonant peaks in the power spectrum at one of the stations, T06 , and demonstrate with synthetic modeling how sediment‐induced resonances can cause instability in the recovered receiver‐function (RF) traces. They also request a detailed explanation of how LQT rotation is conducted, and why its use leads to stable receiver functions in the analysis of Olugboji et al. (2016). We welcome this query as an opportunity to highlight certain technical aspects of the data‐analysis procedures used in Olugboji et al. (2016). Our methods derive partly from methods recommended by previous studies of receiver functions estimated from seismic seafloor data, particularly the use of the modal wavefield decomposition (which we approximated by the LQT rotation) to suppress reverberation signals in the overlying water column.