Abstract for 9th SOHO Workshop, "Helioseismic diagnostics of
solar convection and activity", Stanford, July 1999.
Time-distance helioseismology, spectral factorization and hydrocarbon
reservoir monitoring
by
James E. Rickett and Jon F. Claerbout
Geophysics Department, Stanford University, CA 94305
ABSTRACT
Terrestrial exploration geophysics have a long history of failed
attempts at producing time-distance seismograms by cross-correlating
noise traces. One of the reasons for this failure is the lack of dense
areal coverage of permanent seismometers. State-of-the-art seismic
exploration recording equipment, however, offers tens of thousands of
channels, and permanent recording installations are becoming
economically realistic. The success of time-distance helioseismology
provides a conceptual prototype for building images of the subsurface
from background noise. In turn, this may allow low-cost continual
monitoring of hydrocarbon reservoirs.
We also demonstrate an improved method for deriving time-distance
seismograms. The acoustic time history of the Sun's surface is a
stochastic (t,x,y)-cube of information. Rather than cross-correlating
these noise traces, we pack the (x,y)-mesh of time series into a
single super-trace, unpack, and find the multi-dimensional
minimum-phase acoustic impulse response. Impulse responses derived in
this way contain higher spatial and temporal bandwidth than those
derived by crosscorrelation
Back to my
homepage