iPlex Lunch spring-2016

Acoustics of explosive volcanic eruptions

Explosive volcanic eruptions can inject large volumes of ash into heavily travelled aviation routes and thus pose a significant societal and economic hazard. In remote volcanic regions, satellite data are sometimes the only technology available to observe volcanic eruptions and constrain ash-release parameters for aviation safety. Infrasound data fill this critical observational gap, providing ground-based data for remote volcanic eruptions. Infrasound is atmospheric sound with frequencies below 20 Hz, the lower frequency limit of human hearing. Explosive volcanic eruptions are among the most powerful sources of infrasound observed on Earth, with recordings routinely made at ranges of hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Significant advances in infrasonic data collection, signal processing methods, and propagation modeling have been achieved in the past two decades. Infrasound data can be exploited to detect, locate, and provide detailed chronologies of the timing of explosive eruptions for use in ash transport and dispersal models. This talk provides an overview of recent research progress on the source mechanisms of volcanic infrasound, the relation between volcanic infrasound and volcanic seismicity, the propagation of infrasound through atmospheric waveguides, and the automated detection, location, and cataloging of volcanic infrasound using global and regional infrasonic sensor networks.