Transdimensional Love-wave tomography of the British Isles and shear-velocity structure of the East Irish Sea Basin from ambient-noise interferometry

We present the first Love-wave group-velocity and shear-velocity maps of the British Isles obtained from ambient noise interferometry and fully nonlinear inversion. We computed interferometric inter-station Green's functions by cross-correlating the transverse component of ambient noise records retrieved by 61 seismic stations across the UK and Ireland. Groupvelocity measurements along each possible inter-station path were obtained using frequency-time analysis and converted into a series of inter-station traveltime data sets between 4 and 15 s period. Traveltime uncertainties estimated from the standard deviation of dispersion curves constructed by stacking randomly selected subsets of daily cross-correlations were observed to be too low to allow reasonable data fits to be obtained during tomography. Data uncertainties were therefore estimated again during the inversion as distance-dependent functionals. We produced Love-wave group-velocity maps within eight different period bands using a fully nonlinear tomography method which combines the transdimensional reversible-jump Markov chain Monte Carlo (rj-McMC) algorithm with an eikonal ray tracer. By modelling exact ray paths at each step of the Markov chain we ensured that the nonlinear character of the inverse problem was fully and correctly accounted for. Between 4 and 10 s period, the group-velocity maps show remarkable agreement with the known geology of the British Isles and correctly identify a number of low-velocity sedimentary basins and high-velocity features. Longer period maps, in which most sedimentary basins are not visible, are instead mainly representative of basement rocks. In a second stage of our study we used the results of tomography to produce a series of Love-wave group-velocity dispersion curves across a grid of geographical points focussed around the East Irish Sea sedimentary basin. We then independently inverted each curve using a similar rj-McMC algorithm to obtain a series of 1-D shear-velocity profiles. By merging all 1-D profiles, we created a fully 3-D model of the crust beneath the East Irish Sea. The depth to basement in this model compares well with that averaged from seismic reflection profiles. This result is the first 3-D model in the UK with fully quantified uncertainties: it shows basin depths and basement structures, and their concomitant uncertainties.