Pacific Northwest Curated Seismic Dataset

A curated dataset for a wide range of sources from the Pacific Northwest

Overview

Each dataset is made by two files: waveform (in HDF5 format) and metadata (in CSV format). All follow the structure of seisbench format. See here to learn more about the file structure.

Datasets

We are hosting two copies of the dataset: one on Google Drive, another on UW-ESS server. All datasets are also available through SeisBench.

1. ComCat Events

• EH, BH, and HH channel (velocity)

  • waveform (62.7 GB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]
  • metadata (50.4 MB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]

• EN (accelerometer)

  • waveform (2.1 GB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]
  • metadata (1.7 MB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]

2. Noise Waveform (EH, BH, and HH)

• waveform (~18 GB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]
• metadata (4.9 MB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]

3. Exotic Events (EH, BH, and HH)

• waveform (3.9 GB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]
• metadata (1.4 MB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]

4. Northern California Sequence (December 2022)

• waveform (346 MB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]
• metadata (126 KB): [GDrive] | [UW-ESS]

5. ML-enhanced catalog

• CSV (~93 MB): [GDrive]

Access

Quick tour to the dataset

Here are several ways to use the PNW dataset.

1. Jupyter Notebook

A jupyter notebook is available to load and plot PNW dataset at here. Download and run it on a local machine to enable the interactive plotting (e.g., zoom in/out for checking the picks).

2. A notebook is available here on accessing the dataset with SeisBench APIs.

3. Google Colab

If you are more familiar with Google Colab, go to the link above. Note that interactive plotting is not available on Colab.

Demo sets

1. A micro version of the dataset, which contains 10 earthquake streams, 10 explosion streams, 10 sonic boom streams, 10 thunder streams, and 10 surface event streams. See data/microPNW.

2. A mini version of the dataset, which contains 500 earthquake streams, 500 explosion streams, 500 surface event streams, 126 sonic boom streams, and 94 thunder quake streams.

• waveform (640 MB): [Google Drive] | [UW-ESS]
• metadata (424 KB): [Google Drive] | [UW-ESS]

3. A meso version with 10% of the full ComCat dataset (only earthquake + explosion).

• waveform (6.3 GB): [Google Drive] | [UW-ESS]
• metadata (4.7 MB): [Google Drive] | [UW-ESS]

Metadata

Attribute	Description	Example
event_id	Event identifier	uw10564613
source_origin_time	Source origin time in UTC	2002-10-03T01:56:49.530000Z
source_latitude_deg	-	48.553
source_longitude_deg	-	-122.52
source_type	-	earthquake
source_type_pnsn_label	PNSN AQMS event type	eq
source_depth_km	-	14.907
source_magnitude_preferred	-	2.1
source_magnitude_type_preferred	-	Md
source_magnitude_uncertainty_preferred	-	0.03
source_local/duration/hand_magnitude	Ml, Md, and Mh if available	1.32
source_local/duration_magnitude_uncertainty	magnitude uncertainty if available	0.15
source_depth_uncertainty_km	-	1.69
source_horizontal_uncertainty_km	-	0.694
station_network_code	FDSN network code	UW
station_code	FDSN station code	GNW
station_location_code	FDSN location code	01
station_channel_code	FDSN channel code (first two digits)	BH
station_latitude_deg	-	47.5641
station_longitude_deg	-	-122.825
station_elevation_m	-	220.0
trace_name	Bucket and array index	bucket1$0,:3:15001
trace_sampling_rate_hz	All traces resampled to 100 Hz	100
trace_start_time	Trace start time in UTC	2002-10-03T01:55:59.530000Z
trace_P/S_arrival_sample	Closest sample index of arrival	8097
trace_P/S_arrival_uncertainty_s	Picking uncertainty in second	0.02
trace_P/S_onset	-	emergent
trace_P_polarity	P-wave onset polarity	positive, negative, or undecidable
trace_has_offset	Any visible offset in the trace	1
trace_missing_channel	Number of missing channel of the trace	2
trace_snr_db	SNR for each component	6.135

Reference

Ni, Y., Hutko, A., Skene, F., Denolle, M., Malone, S., Bodin, P., Hartog, R., & Wright, A. (2023). Curated Pacific Northwest AI-ready Seismic Dataset. Seismica, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.26443/seismica.v2i1.368

BiBTex:

@article{ni2023pnw, 
  title={Curated Pacific Northwest AI-ready Seismic Dataset}, 
  volume={2}, 
  url={https://seismica.library.mcgill.ca/article/view/368}, 
  number={1}, 
  journal={Seismica}, 
  author={Ni, Yiyu and Hutko, Alexander and Skene, Francesca and Denolle, Marine and Malone, Stephen and Bodin, Paul and Hartog, Renate and Wright, Amy}, 
  year={2023}, 
  month={05},
  doi={10.26443/seismica.v2i1.368}
}

Known issues

• [August 2023] Very few events (~15) in the ComCat dataset may have inconsistent event_type_pnsn_label and event_type. This issue comes from the outdated ComCat event metadata. Please prioritize PNSN label when such inconsistent occurs.
• [June 2025] The trace_start_time field in the exotic metadata was delayed by 50 seconds. The metadata has now been corrected for all affected files.

Report bugs

If you find any issue in the dataset, please report through GitHub Issue or Email.