Generating regional infrasound celerity-range models using ground-truth information and the implications for event location

The European Arctic: A Laboratory for Seismoacoustic Studies

“…Korea (Che et al, 2011) and the U.S. (Nippress et al, 2014), to examine the variability of the recorded infrasonic wavefield and the consequences for infrasonic event detection and location capability. In the same way that seismic tomography is performed regionally and locally to illuminate structure at the respective spatial scales, atmospheric tomography needs to be performed as broadly as possible to understand the temporal and spatial variability of the atmosphere.…”

The Development of Global Probabilistic Propagation Look-Up Tables for Infrasound Celerity and Back-Azimuth Deviation

“…We first compare the GeoAc propagation modeled celerity with that of the tau-p approximation for propagation (Garcés et al, 1998;Drob et al, 2010), used to generate the physics-based priors used by Marcillo et al (2014). In addition, we compare these with observations that were used to generate data-based priors by Nippress et al (2014) to ensure that the generated priors accurately represent the locations. The data used were rocket-motor detonation signals at the Utah test and training range (UTTR), a site of one of the main sources of infrasound signals in the western United States (Hedlin and Walker, 2013;Drob et al, 2013;Nippress et al, 2014).…”

“…A major challenge in infrasound monitoring is to model the celerity and back-azimuth deviation in such a way that the uncertainty in the atmospheric specification at any given instance in time is accounted for. This is particularly pertinent to detecting, associating, and locating global infrasound sources using the International Monitoring System (IMS) infrasound network; a global network including infrasound arrays for verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty with 60 total (47 currently installed) infrasound stations (e.g., Christie and Campus, 2010;Nippress et al, 2014). Having a set of prior information for a given area can aid in determining if one can expect detections at a certain azimuth and distance from a source and provide constraints on the characteristics of those detections.…”

Assessment of infrasound signals recorded on seismic stations and infrasound arrays in the western United States using ground truth sources

“…Source constraints from ground truth are also critical in assessing and improving time dependent atmospheric parameters used in ray tracing and waveform modelling. Several studies Nippress et al 2014;Blom et al 2015) use infrasonic signals from ground truth events in the western United States (US) to improve propagation modelling and to improve source location accuracy. Ground truth sources from rocket engine tests recorded at an International Monitoring System station in southern Germany were used to characterize infrasound signals (Koch 2010) as well as to verify propagation models (Pilger et al 2013).…”