Detecting Multiple Surface Waves Excited by the 2011 Tohoku‐Oki Earthquake from GEONET Observations

Abstract Multiple surface waves circling the earth excited by the 2011 M w  9.0 Tohoku‐Oki earthquake were well recorded by both global and regional broadband (BB) seismometer networks. In this study, we explore the ability of kinematic solutions of Global Positioning System (GPS) observations from GEONET to reveal the phases of multiple surface waves. Even though multipath effects and common mode errors are not reduced, the wave packages of G 2 / G 3 of Love waves and R 2 / R 3 of Rayleigh waves are clearly identified from the raw GPS displacement time series in the 100–500 s periods, which show great coherency with BB seismograms in both amplitude and time. The arrival times of these wave packages tally with the synthetic value by the group velocities from the global dispersion model. We consider that kinematic solutions of continuous GPS measurement can act as a supplementary tool for studying global surface‐wave dispersion.