**5.3 The error caused by the focal mechanism**

Focal mechanism determines the radiation pattern of seismic waves but it does not determine arrival times of seismic phases (e.g., Ma and Atkinson, 2006; their Fig. 11). However, the focal mechanism partially determines the shapes and amplitudes of waveforms and thus may cause an error in time readings. If the observed *PmP* and *sPmP* are clear, but the synthetic *PmP* or *sPmP* are not, we can change the station azimuth, generate new synthetics, and then make comparisons again. So, the arrival time reading error caused by the focal mechanism is negligible. To reduce the reading error, we use the arrival times of peaks of *sPmP* and *PmP*.
