A new study in AGU’s Geophysical Research Letters reports on the first detection of a large, distant earthquake in a network of balloon-bound pressure sensors in the Earth’s stratosphere.
When an earthquake occurs, the vibrating ground sends infrasound high into the atmosphere, where the balloons and their instruments are waiting. The balloons float through the stratosphere for several months after launch, following high-altitude atmospheric patterns.
Previous research has shown that these balloon-based sensors can pick up small, local quakes, but until now, a multi-balloon network had not yet detected large earthquakes at a great distance.
On December 14, 2021, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck Indonesia’s Flores Sea. From their sensor data, the research team was able to accurately back-calculate the earthquake’s magnitude and several other key parameters about both the quake and planetary structure. They were also able to track the dispersion of the seismic wave across the surface with their network.
“We are very, very happy because it was not only a single balloon that detected the earthquake, it was sensed on multiple balloons,” said Raphael Garcia, lead author on the new study.
The success of the network highlights the potential for balloon-based seismic monitoring to complement areas that are difficult to monitor with a ground based network, such as the sea floor. The balloon could also be used as a rapid-response tool for monitoring aftershocks.
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-balloon-fleet-earthquakes-stratosphere.html