Ambient Earth noise:: A survey of the Global Seismographic Network -: art. no. B11307

It has been a decade since the last comprehensive model of ambient Earth noise was published (Peterson, 1993). Since then, observations of ambient Earth noise from the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Global Seismographic Network (GSN) of widely distributed, similarly equipped, and well-calibrated stations have become available. The broad geographic sampling of this large data set and the ease of access to waveform data provided by the IRIS Data Management System facilitate analysis of global noise samples. We have analyzed data from the 118 GSN stations operating during the year July 2001 through June 2002. On the basis of over 738,000 hourly spectral estimates computed from these stations' data, we have developed a robust noise model that exhibits significant differences from previous models both in the normal mode and body wave bands. Our analysis technique has the advantage that we do not need to search for quiet periods but can include all data where the instruments are operating correctly.