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Abstract

We present a novel method to recover absolute S velocities from receiver functions. For a homogeneous half-space the S velocity can be calculated from the horizontal slowness and the angle of surface particle motion for an incident P wave. Generally, the calculated S velocity is an apparent half-space value which depends on model inhomogeneity and P-waveform. We therefore, suggest to calculate such apparent half-space S velocities from low-pass filtered (smoothed) receiver functions using a suite of filter-parameters, T. The use of receiver functions neutralize the influence of the P-waveform, and the successive low-pass filterings emphasize the variation of S velocity with depth. We apply this VS,app.(T) technique to teleseismic data from three stations: FUR, BFO and SUM, situated on thick sediments, bedrock and the Greenland ice cap, respectively. The observed VS,app.(T) curves indicate the absolute S velocities from the near surface to the uppermost mantle beneath each station, clearly revealing the different geological environments. Application of linearized, iterative inversion quantify these observations into VS(z) models, practically independent of the S-velocity starting model. The obtained models show high consistency with independent geoscientific results. These cases provide also a general validation of the VS,app.(T) method. We propose the computation of VS,app.(T) curves for individual three-component broad-band stations, both for direct indication of the S velocities and for inverse modelling.