National Nuclear Security Administration

The atmosphere is a dynamic and complex medium, and infrasonic waves traveling through this medium will be strongly affected by its properties. The wind field, temperature, and composition of the atmosphere up to heights of 150 km will determine how sound waves are propagated between a source and a receiver. We integrate acoustic wave propagation models, the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Horizontal Wind Model (HWM93), the NRL Mass Spectrometer and Incoherent Scatter (MSIS90) atmospheric model, and the United Kingdom Meteorological Office (UKMO) Correlative Analyses to investigate the effects of atmospheric variability on the types of infrasonic phases that may be observed at CTBT array IS59 in Hawaii. Array IS59 [Garcés and Bass, 2000 (this issue)] started recording and archiving infrasonic data in May 25, 2000, and has recorded a variety of regional and distant events. We use the results of our theoretical and data assimilation work to characterize the response of IS59 so that it possible to associate and locate events using multiple arrays