Washington: A new study has revealed that Antarctica`s frozen ground is receptive to seismic waves from distant earthquakes after the researchers found out that 2010 Chile earthquake was the reason behind icequakes in Antarctica.
The study conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology removed the longer-period signals as the seismic waves spread from the distant epicenter to identify high-frequency signals from nearby source.
Zhigang Peng, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences said that they interpreted these events as small icequakes, most of which were triggered during or immediately after the passing of long-period Rayleigh waves generated from the Chilean mainshock.
Peng continued saying that this was somewhat different from the micro-earthquakes and tremor caused by both Love and Rayleigh-type surface waves that traditionally occurred in other tectonically active regions thousands of miles from large earthquakes.
He said that the slight difference was that micro-earthquakes responded to both shearing and volumetric deformation from distant events and the newly found icequakes responded only to volumetric deformation.
The researchers found the clearest indication of induced high-frequency signals at station HOWD near the northwest corner of the Ellsworth Mountains.
Peng said that the source locations of the icequakes were difficult to determine because there was not widespread seismic network coverage in Antarctica.
The study is published in Nature Geoscience.
