Abstract
A number of International Monitoring System (IMS) type infrasound stations are now operating for many years. Continuous automatic processing of the data is being performed in the [0.02–4] Hz frequency band in order to detect and characterize coherent infrasonic waves. A large number of detections are associated with natural phenomena. Ocean wave interactions are quasi-permanent sources of infrasonic waves detected on a global scale. Their monitoring reveals clear periodic trends in the detected bearings and signal amplitude, providing further confirmation that long-range propagation strongly depends on the atmospheric conditions. Ocean swells are then valuable sources for global atmospheric monitoring since pressure waves can be generated continuously over long duration, allowing investigations in the seasonal and diurnal fluctuations of the atmosphere. Signals from volcanic eruptions also offer a unique opportunity for atmospheric studies. At large propagation ranges from volcanoes, infrasound measurements can be used as input of inversion procedures to delineate the vertical structure of the wind in a range of altitude where ground-based or satellite measurements are rare. Such studies provide new insights on quantitative relationships between infrasonic observables and atmospheric specifications.
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Acknowledgement
The authors are grateful to Drs. E. Blanc and J. Guilbert from CEA/DASE for their interests in these studies and helpful discussions, and Dr. Nicolas Brachet from CTBTO PTS/IDC for providing bulletins. We would also like to thank the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GSFC-GMAO), and the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) for providing the NWP data that went into the NRL-G2S atmospheric specifications. Support was also provided by Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Coordination de la Recherche Volcanologique, and Ministère de l’Ecologie et Développement Durable to install instruments close to the Yasur volcano.
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Appendix
Appendix
In order to estimate the detection capability of a geographically distributed network of stations, it is essential to predict the amplitude of an infrasound signal at any location, and to further evaluate whether the signal is detectable above the noise levels at the recording stations. Assuming that the signals of interest are produced by high explosive tests, we use for the yield estimation the scaling relation derived from the LANL database covering charge weights of ∼ 20–4,880 tons (Whitaker et al. 2003),
where P wca is the wind corrected pressure and SR is the scaled range (in km) between station and receiver. P wca is calculated from the observed peak-to-peak pressure (in microbars) at the dominant period of a stratospheric infrasound arrival, P raw, using,
where V s is the along-path horizontal component of the wind speed (in m/s) at an altitude of 50 km. To estimate V s, the along-path stratospheric wind component is extracted at each node of the source grid along the great circle arc, and the mean is calculated. The scaled range, SR, is defined as,
where R is the source to receiver range (in km) and E is the charge weight (in kt). Overall, it follows from (20.1) to (20.3),
where E min is the minimum detectable charge weight for a measured amplitude P threshold of a coherent signal.
To evaluate the detection capability of the IMS network, we consider the constraints on evaluating the smallest measurable signal amplitude P threshold at the receivers.
Due to the high sensitivity of infrasound stations to a large variety of signals including coherent signals with very low SNR, and in order to minimize the number of missed events and reduce the false alarm rate, we set a minimum value for SNR equal to 1 for all stations (Evers and Haak 2004). As the SNR value is taken equal to 1, P threshold in (20.4) is in essence the background noise level.
The detection capability is estimated using a 1° × 1° source grid covering the globe. For one specific date and time, the stratospheric wind is averaged along the great circle path between each grid node location (i, j) and each array (k). From (20.4), we compute E min[k′](i, j), where (1 ≤ k′ ≤ N) is the index of sorted values of energy. For sources located with a threshold of N stations, the minimum detectable energy is given by E min[k′=N](i, j).
For the 36 station network, we consider a time independent and geographically uniform noise distribution of 0.02 Pa RMS. This value corresponds to the average noise level for frequencies greater than 0.5 Hz and local wind speeds generally lower than 2 m/s (Bowman et al. 2005). The stratospheric wind term V s (20.4) is derived from HWM-93. Using these parameters, the network performances with one-station coverage are simulated.
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Le Pichon, A., Vergoz, J., Cansi, Y., Ceranna, L., Drob, D. (2010). Contribution of Infrasound Monitoring for Atmospheric Remote Sensing. In: Le Pichon, A., Blanc, E., Hauchecorne, A. (eds) Infrasound Monitoring for Atmospheric Studies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9508-5_20
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