Passive probing of the sound fixing and ranging channel with hydro-acoustic observations from ridge earthquakes

The International Monitoring System includes a hydro-acoustic part to verify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Besides explosive signals, monitoring stations also detect acoustic waves from earthquakes that travel through the SOund Fixing And Ranging (SOFAR) channel. The travel times of such detections are listed in the Reviewed Event Bulletin, which is statistically evaluated for the stations located in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans. The celerities of ridge earthquakes are calculated to build up a homogeneous data-set, based on similar source mechanisms. The celerity is defined as the epicentral distance divided by the travel time. The global characteristics of these celerities can be well understood in terms of temperature variations in the SOFAR channel. A detailed velocity profile has been retrieved for the Atlantic Ocean where large differences (14 m/s) are found between the southern and northern parts of the basin. Propagation modeling with normal modes supports these findings, which shows that the celerity gives an estimate of the sound speed in the SOFAR channel. These results compare remarkably well with those from active experiments, showing the ability of passively probing the SOFAR channel with hydro-acoustic waves from earthquake sources.