NUCLEAR EXPLOSION AND INFRASOUND EVENT RESOURCES OF THE SMDC MONITORING RESEARCH PROGRAM

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The Research and Development Support Services (RDSS) project of the Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC) provides a range of resources and services for use in nuclear explosion monitoring R&D. This presentation focuses on some recent enhancements to the infrasound, seismic, and hydroacoustic resources, which can be accessed from the RDSS website at http://www.rdss.info. In particular, ongoing developments and improvements are related to (1) the nuclear explosion database (NEDB) and (2) infrasound signals and associated source information. The RDSS project has traditionally maintained an archive of information on source parameter data and waveforms from worldwide nuclear explosions. A major revision and update of the NEDB includes newly published or revised source information about historical explosions, access to additional or corrected waveform data for some explosions, and new data from more recent nuclear tests (viz., North Korea). New web tools for accessing the NEDB archive include GoogleMap visualization of alternative event locations, displays of recording station information (e.g., data availability and station parameters), seismic travel time residual displays, and new waveform display and retrieval options, which include options for simple prefiltering and signal rescaling during data review prior to download. Identification of infrasound events for the RDSS infrasound database has continued. The effort is based primarily on seismic-event bulletins, volcanic activity reports, meteor observations, announcements on rocket launches and information appearing in the news media. The search for infrasound signals associated with events in these reports and bulletins is utilizing the automatic detection lists of International Monitoring System (IMS) stations augmented with the processing of waveform data from the SMDC waveform archive. The detectability at IMS infrasound stations I26DE (Freyung, Germany) and I18DK (Qaanaaq, Greenland, Denmark) of a large series of explosions in northern Finland to destroy ammunitions was also analyzed with regard to propagation conditions and station noise. During favorable conditions, low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) signals were detected at the two stations, which are located at much larger distances than stations in Fenno-Scandia, for which infrasound signals have previously been reported for these events.

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