Introducing inframatics.org

Background

In 1883, the Krakatoa volcano awakened the world to the existence of sub audible sound waves in the atmosphere. These waves, known as infrasound, can travel thousands of kilometers and are readily detected by sensitive microbarometers. We now know that a wide variety of other atmospheric phenomena, including tornadoes, landslides, earthquakes, meteors, aurora and atmospheric turbulence, and man-made sources, including atmospheric nuclear tests, rockets and supersonic aircraft, also generate infrasound. These long-period sound waves were of great interest in the 1950's and 1960's during the era of atmospheric nuclear testing. Interest waned as the Limited Test-Ban Treaty pushed nuclear testing underground. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty rekindled interest, however. This treaty bans all nuclear tests and establishes a monitoring network of sensors that probe the Earth's solid interior, oceans and atmosphere for unusual signals. The infrasound network will offer us an unprecedented opportunity to better understand man-made and natural atmospheric phenomena on a global scale. We anticipate that this global network of listening posts monitoring Earth's atmospheric shell will some day become as indispensable as the global seismic network that monitor's Earth's solid interior.

The organization and website

The new inframatics organization provides information about the use of sub audible sound waves in the atmosphere for studying natural atmospheric phenomena and monitoring anthropogenic sound sources including clandestine nuclear tests. The main product of this organization's website (www.inframatics.org) is a quarterly newsletter that includes articles summarizing ground breaking research in low-frequency atmospheric acoustics. Our primary research goal is to learn how we can use low-frequency sound waves to characterize distant natural and man-made atmospheric events. With this goal in mind, research continues on how sound propagates through our unsteady atmosphere and how clear recordings of distant events can be made despite noise due to atmospheric turbulence. Researchers are improving our models of the atmosphere and are collecting information about significant atmospheric sources to provide a basis for this research. In addition to presenting new research results, the newsletter also provides updates on construction of the global infrasound monitoring network and communications system. The newsletter also provides other information that we expect will be of interest to the international infrasound community including information about new opportunities for funding and information about past and upcoming meetings.

Given the rapid pace at which this field is evolving, the inframatics.org website will also provide continual updates to the information found in the quarterly newsletter as well as information about this field in the popular press, updates on personnel movements and links to related sites on the internet. The website also provides an opportunity for those who build and operate infrasound arrays to report problems or innovative solutions to these problems.

For more information

Enquiries about the new organization/website, or requests to be included in the mailing list can be sent to any member of the editorial board listed below.

Michael Hedlin (Laboratory for Atmospheric Acoustics, UC San Diego): hedlin@ucsd.edu
Peter Brown (University of Western Ontario): pbrown@uwo.ca
Paola Campus (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization): Paola.Campus@ctbto.org
Doug Christie (Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University): Douglas.Christie@anu.edu.au
Milton Garces (Infrasound Laboratory, University of Hawaii): milton@isla.hawaii.edu
Alexis Le Pichon (Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique): alexis.le-pichon@cea.fr
Sergey Kulichkov (Oboukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics): snk@omega.ifaran.ru