Infrasonic Waves and Assessment of the Explosion Energy of the Bering Sea Meteoroid on December 19, 2018

Abstract

On December 18, 2018, at 23:48 UTC a meteoroid exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere, at a height of 25.6 km over the Bering Sea, causing a shockwave. The mass of the Bering Sea meteoroid was estimated at 1600 tons, and its diameter, at 9–14 meters. If these assessments are correct, it was the second largest explosion of a space body in the Earth’s atmosphere for the past 30 years. Station IS44 of the international system of infrasonic monitoring, nearest to the epicenter of meteoroid explosion, is located on the peninsula of Kamchatka at a distance of 1024 km. At the IS44 station, an infrasonic signal from the meteoroid explosion was recorded. This paper presents the analysis of this infrasonic signal and an assessment of the energy of this event.