Roberto Gorelli points our attention at a recently published meteor related paper:

Altitude-Dependent Near-Source Spectral Filtering of Meteor Infrasound Above 80 km and Consequences for Period-Based Energy Estimates

This article has been submitted for publication by Elizabeth A. Silber, Igor P. Chunchuzov, Oleg E. Popov, Sergey N. Kulichkov

Abstract: Infrasound signal period is widely used as a proxy for source energy in bolide studies, but the reliability of period–yield relations for small, high-altitude regional meteors has not been systematically evaluated. We analyze 90 infrasound detections from well-constrained regional meteoroid events (source altitudes 20–111 km, ranges 47–268 km) and demonstrate a strong, monotonic decrease in receiver dominant frequency with increasing source altitude (Spearman 𝑟𝑠 = −0.629, 𝑝 = 3.3 × 10⁻¹¹). No detections above 80 km retain dominant frequencies exceeding 3 Hz, and 75% of detections above 100 km are dominated by sub-1 Hz content. Partial correlation analysis indicates this is primarily an altitude effect, not a propagation distance artifact. Near-source dissipation modeling using the generalized Burgers equation supports a physical mechanism: the exponential increase in kinematic viscosity with altitude drives the acoustic Reynolds number downward, imposing frequency-dependent molecular absorption that selectively attenuates highfrequency content within the first 5 km below the source. Our results suggest that this atmospheric low-pass filter systematically modulates the observed period and can bias period-based energy estimates upward by one to two orders of magnitude for sources above 80–90 km when uncorrected period–yield relations are applied. These findings are relevant to any high-altitude infrasound source, including space debris and controlled reentries.

You can download this paper for free: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.13853 (39 pages).

 

Older meteor library news:

2026

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017