Infrasound Monitoring for Atmospheric Studies
The infrasound field, the science of low-frequency acoustic waves, has developed into a broad interdisciplinary field encompassing academic disciplines of physics and recent technical and scientific developments. The infrasound network of the Internationa
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Alexis Le Pichon Elisabeth Blanc Alain Hauchecorne ●
Editors
Infrasound Monitoring for Atmospheric Studies
Editors Alexis Le Pichon CEA, DAM DIF, F-91297 Arpajon France [email protected]
Elisabeth Blanc CEA, DAM DIF, F-91297 Arpajon France [email protected]
Alain Hauchecorne Université Versailles-Saint Quentin CNRS INSU, LATMOS-IPSL, BP3 91371 Verrières-le-Buisson France [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4020-9507-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4020-9508-5 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-9508-5 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2009941470 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Cover illustration: Background image, ‘Listening to the Earth’ @ Shana ParkeHarrison. Images from left to right: Thunderstorms and lightning on May 26th, 2006 Agra, Kansas, USA, courtesy of Oscar van der Velde; Propagation of infrasonic waves from a meteorite exploding in altitude above the Andes Mountain ranges using the NRL-RAMPE parabolic equation method, courtesy of D.P. Drob, NRL, Washington; Kelvin–Helmholtz instability clouds in San Fransisco, courtsey of Lyudmila Zinkova. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Preface
The use of infrasound to monitor the atmosphere has, like infrasound itself, gone largely unheard of through the years. But it has many applications, and it is about time that a book is being devoted to this fascinating subject. Our own involvement with infrasound occurred as graduate students of Prof. William Donn, who had established an infrasound array at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory (now the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) of Columbia University. It was a natural outgrowth of another major activity at Lamont, using seismic waves to explore the Earth’s interior. Both the atmosphere and the solid Earth feature velocity (seismic or acoustic) gradients in the vertical which act to refract the respective waves. The refraction in turn allows one to calculate the respective background structure in these mediums, indirectly exploring locations that are hard to observe otherwise. Monitoring these signals also allows one to discover various phenomena, both natural and man-made (some of which have military applications). The set-up at Lamont featured a tripartiate array of infrasound sensors of various spacings. The short period (~5 s) array was installed in out-of-the-way locations (like parks) in what is essentially a metropolitan area. This was made more difficult by the necessity to connect some of these sensors to noise reducing pipes. Longer period signals were recorded with microbar
