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Surface Waves

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Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Definition

Surface waves are elastic waves which propagate along the surface of the earth and whose energy decays exponentially with depth.

Surface waves contain most of the long period energy (periods greater than 20 s) generated by earthquakes and recorded at teleseismic distances. Most prominent on records of moderate (M ≥ 5.5) earthquakes are the fundamental mode wave trains that have propagated along the direct great circle path between the epicenter and the station. The dispersive and attenuative properties of these wave trains have been used extensively, since the 1950s, to infer crust and upper mantle structure at the regional scale. For earthquakes of magnitude 7 or larger, successive, earth-circling surface wave trains can be followed for many hours (Figure 1) and are either analyzed individually or, at the longest periods (T > 250 s) they are combined over time lengths of tens of hours or days to produce a spectrum of Earth’s free oscillations (see Free Oscillations of the...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, 215 McCone Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Barbara Romanowicz

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  1. Barbara Romanowicz
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Geophysical Research Institute, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Hyderabad, India

    Harsh K. Gupta

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Romanowicz, B. (2011). Surface Waves. In: Gupta, H.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8702-7_143

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