Three-dimensional finite difference viscoelastic wave modelling including surface topography

I have undertaken 3-D finite difference (FD) modelling of seismic scattering from free-surface topography. Exact free-surface boundary conditions for arbitrary 3-D topographies have been derived for the particle velocities. The boundary conditions are combined with a velocity-stress formulation of the full viscoelastic wave equations. A curved grid represents the physical medium and its upper boundary represents the free-surface topography. The wave equations are numerically discretized by an eighth-order FD method on a staggered grid in space, and a leap-frog technique and the Crank-Nicholson method in time. I simulate scattering from teleseismic P waves by using plane incident wave fronts and real topography from a 60 × 60 km area that includes the NORESS array of seismic receiver stations in southeastern Norway. Synthetic snapshots and seismograms of the wavefield show clear conversion from P to Rg (short-period fundamental-mode Rayleigh) waves in areas of rough topography, which is consistent with numerous observations. By parallelization on fast supercomputers, it is possible to model higher frequencies and/or larger areas than before.