Remote Seismoacoustic Monitoring of Tropical Cyclones in the Sea of Japan

Abstract

In the course of processing and analysing data from a two-coordinate laser strainmeter, obtained during the propagation of the Hagupit typhoon over the Sea of Japan, we researched the possibility of sensing the direction of tropical cyclones/typhoons and also tracking their movements. We tackled the set of problems on the basis of further development of the technology for sensing the direction of primary and secondary microseisms’ generation zones, the “voice of the sea” microseisms, and clarifying the connection between their formation zones and movement of tropical cyclones. In our work, we identified the formation zones of primary and secondary microseisms, which were registered by the two-coordinate laser strainmeter. We established that, from the registered microseisms, we could determine the main characteristics of wind waves generated by a typhoon, but we could not identify its location. By processing the two-coordinate laser strainmeter data in the range of the “voice of the sea” microseisms, we established the possibility of sensing the direction of the “voice of the sea” microseisms’ formation zones, which are associated with zones of the highest energy capacity of typhoons, and this allowed us to tracking the direction of the typhoons’ movement.

Keywords

• typhoon
• tropical cyclone
• primary and secondary microseisms
• “voice of the sea”
• laser strainmeter