Observational Evidence for Wind-Driven Low-Pass Filtering of Infrasound at Short Range
Abstract
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.00421,
title = {Observational Evidence for Wind-Driven Low-Pass Filtering of Infrasound at Short Range},
author = {Elizabeth A. Silber and Daniel C. Bowman and Sasha Egan and Lawrence Burkett and Michael Fleigle and Keehoon Kim and Tesla Newton and Loring P. Schaible and Richard Sonnenfeld and Nora Wynn and Jonathan Snively},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.00421},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
25 pages, 4 figures, supplemental materials. Geophysical Research Letters (2026)