Achievements and Prospects of Global Broadband Seismographic Networks After 30 Years of Continuous Geophysical Observations

Abstract

Global seismographic networks (GSNs) emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, facilitated by seminal international developments in theory, technology, instrumentation, and data exchange. The mid‐ to late‐twentieth century saw the creation of the World‐Wide Standardized Seismographic Network (1961) and International Deployment of Accelerometers (1976), which advanced global geographic coverage as seismometer bandwidth increased greatly allowing for the recording of the Earth's principal seismic spectrum. The modern era of global observations and rapid data access began during the 1980s, and notably included the inception of the GEOSCOPE initiative (1982) and GSN (1988). Through continual improvements, GEOSCOPE and the GSN have realized near‐real time recording of ground motion with state‐of‐art data quality, dynamic range, and timing precision to encompass 180 seismic stations, many in very remote locations. Data from GSNs are increasingly integrated with other geophysical data (e.g., space geodesy, infrasound and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar). Globally distributed seismic data are critical to resolving crust, mantle, and core structure; illuminating features of the plate tectonic and mantle convection system; rapid characterization of earthquakes; identification of potential tsunamis; global nuclear test verification; and provide sensitive proxies for environmental changes. As the global geosciences community continues to advance our understanding of Earth structure and processes controlling elastic wave propagation, GSN infrastructure offers a springboard to realize increasingly multi‐instrument geophysical observatories. Here, we review the historical, scientific, and monitoring heritage of GSNs, summarize key discoveries, and discuss future associated opportunities for Earth Science.

Global Winds Shape Planetary‐Scale Lamb Waves

“…Barometers at stations of the global seismic network (Ringler et al., 2022) recorded pressure disturbances linked to the 2022 Tonga eruption, at a sampling frequency of 1 Hz. Raw pressure recordings were downloaded and high‐pass filtered (with 1‐hr period threshold) to isolate the volcano‐induced pressure disturbances.…”

Crustal and Uppermost Mantle Azimuthal Seismic Anisotropy of Antarctica From Ambient Noise Tomography

“…We use the Rayleigh wave phase velocity dispersion measurements between 8 and 55 s obtained by Zhou et al (2022). Those measurements are obtained from the CC of ambient noise data extracted from 245 broadband seismic stations deployed on the Antarctic continent and surrounding islands, including seven permanent stations (e.g., Ringler et al, 2022) and six large temporary networks (Figure 1, Table S1 in Supporting Information S1). We applied an ambient noise data processing procedure (Bensen et al, 2007) to the data set to extract the surface wave signal between each station pair.…”

The suitability of various recording methods and devices for registration of seismic signals

“…Comparative analyses of the above-presented and summarized characteristics of seismic signals to be registered and studied for the solution of various seismological or other scientific-technical tasks with the possibilities of different recording methods, presented in table 1, show that the studied seismic signals as a whole cannot be covered by any one recording device, regardless of the registration method being used (see, e.g., [4,5,9,22,31,[65][66][67][68]).…”