Seismic Observation and Location of a Meteor Burst From a Dense Station Deployment in Southern Spain

Abstract

A meteor event on 11 December 2016 in southern Spain was accompanied by an audible boom and felt vibrations. Acousto-seismic coupling of the near-field pressure wave has been recorded by an unusually large number of 44 local seismic stations. Considering the ERA5 atmospheric temperature and wind speed model, we can attribute the seismic detections to a point source at 38 km height, coincident with the most luminous fragmentation event recorded by meteor cameras. We show and analyze waveforms, spectrograms and signal polarization along a dense, temporary broadband transect in the area. Seismic records show important differences between them, like large variability in polarization, amplitudes and frequency content, emphasizing the role of local effects. The duration and complexity of waveforms can be attributed to path and site effects, including multipathing through small-scale atmospheric heterogeneity and scattering of the incoming acoustic wavefield at local topography.