Retrieving PmP Travel Times From a Persistent Localized Microseismic Source

Ocean swells or storms can generate persistent localized microseismic sources in deep oceans, which emanate body wave energy traveling through the Earth’s interior, carrying abundant information about subsurface structures as earthquake waves do. However, body waves from localized microseismic sources have not been fully exploited to map the internal structures of the Earth. Here, we report that the travel times of body wave reflections from the Moho can be obtained from body waves generated by localized microseismic sources. We further demonstrate that body waves from these sources can be utilized to constrain the Moho morphology through synthetic experiments and comparisons with earthquake receiver function results. Our work suggests that localized microseismic sources can be exploited to map the internal structure of the Earth without relying on earthquake data.