Origin of spurious single forces in the source mechanism of volcanic seismicity

•Strong single forces are often found in the source mechanism of volcanic seismicity.•We perform synthetic tests on single force reconstructions in moment tensor inversion.•Spurious single forces are reconstructed due to mismodelings in source inversion.•They accommodate the mismodeled converted S- and surface waves.•Interpretation of the physical processes of the SF is rendered almost impossible.

Single forces are often observed in the source mechanism of volcanic seismicity. However, their underlying causative processes are still doubtful. The reliability of single force observations must be assessed, prior to analyzing them in terms of physical mechanisms. Using numerical examples, we show that source mislocation and velocity mismodeling lead to strong spurious single forces. Layering in the velocity model produces converted S-waves and source mislocations modify the wavefield at the free surface (mainly through converted S- and surface waves). However, these waves can also be accurately reproduced in a homogeneous model by adding a vertical single force in the source mechanism, which mainly generates S-waves for large take-off angles. Hence approximate velocity models can lead to the appearance of strong single forces in source inversions. We conclude that, in moment tensor inversion, while single forces can be used in some cases to accommodate mismodeling errors, they cannot be reliably used to infer physical processes.