Analysis of Methods for Estimating the Energy of Sources of Acoustic-Gravity Waves in the Earth’s Atmosphere

Abstract—A comparative analysis is presented of the approaches and methods for estimating the energy of the sources of acoustic-gravity waves (AGW) in the Earth’s atmosphere from the records of these waves. A number of known relationships linking the parameters of the recorded infrasonic signals and the source energy are considered. A phenomenological model of the propagation of infrasonic signals from high-yield explosive sources in the stratospheric waveguide is discussed. Based on the model and principle of energy similarity of AGW spectra, a new approach is developed to determine the source energy, in which the key parameter is the dominant frequency of the signal propagating in the atmosphere. It is shown that the source energy estimates obtained by the developed approach agree well with the instrumental data. The errors of AGW source energy estimates obtained by the existing approaches and the new approach are determined.