Potential of the Arkhangelsk seismic network for European Arctic monitoring

Abstract

The Arkhangelsk Seismic Network (ASN) of the N. Laverov Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, founded in 2003, includes 10 permanent seismic stations located on the coasts of the White, Barents, and Kara Seas and on the Arctic archipelagos of Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, and Severnaya Zemlya. The network is registered with the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks and the International Seismological Center. We used not only ASN data to process earthquakes but also the waveforms of various international seismic stations. The 13,000 seismic events were registered using ASN data for 2012–2022, and for 5,500 of them, we determined the parameters of the earthquake epicenters from the European Arctic. The spatial distribution of epicenters shows that the ASN monitors not only the main seismically active zones but also weak seismicity on the shelf of the Barents and Kara Seas. The representative magnitude of ASN was M_{L, rep}=3.5. The level of microseismic noise has seasonal variations that affect the registration capabilities of each station included in the ASN and the overall sensitivity of the network as a whole. In summer, the sensitivity of the ASN decreased owing to the increasing microseismic and ambient noises, whereas in winter, the sensitivity of the ASN increased significantly because of the decrease.