Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Silber, Elizabeth A., Bowman, Daniel C., Egan, Sasha, Burkett, Lawrence, Fleigle, Michael, Kim, Keehoon, Newton, Tesla, Schaible, Loring P., Sonnenfeld, Richard, Wynn, Nora, Snively, Jonathan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00421
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Table of Contents:
  • Infrasound from controlled explosions provide a unique opportunity to isolate atmospheric effects on propagation. We report observations from two campaigns in May and October 2024, each featuring 10-ton TNT-equivalent controlled surface chemical explosions recorded by a dense network of 31 single-sensor stations within 23 km. Despite identical sources, the observed wavefields were very different. October signals followed a near-unimodal period-distance trend, whereas May signals exhibited a pronounced azimuthal bifurcation in both period and celerity. Downwind paths largely preserved the short-period baseline observed in October, while upwind paths showed systematically longer periods caused by wind-driven low-pass filtering. This study provides the first direct observational evidence that tropospheric winds can impose azimuth-dependent low-pass filtering at local ranges, without the influence of measured temperature inversions. Thus, the structure of the atmosphere can modify the spectral characteristics of low-frequency acoustic waves even at a distance of only a few kilometers.