CTBT Monitoring: A Vital Activity for Our Profession

Abstract

Late in 2007, the Seismological Society of America (SSA) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) agreed on a joint position statement titled “Capability to Monitor the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).” It reaffirmed a similar joint statement issued eight years earlier, saying in essence that these two professional societies are confident that a combination of worldwide monitoring resources will meet the verification goals of the CTBT. The full statement can be found at http://www.seismosoc.org/government/position_statement.html and in the March/April 2008 issue of Seismological Research Letters ( SRL 79, 158–159). I appreciate the SRL editor's invitation to expand here on some of the issues related to this joint statement. ...the development of seismology has been stimulated for decades by funding to improve the ability to monitor nuclear test explosions... The CTBT is intended to impede nuclear weapons development and as such is a major initiative in nuclear arms control, strongly supporting the endangered Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It is of specialized importance to seismologists for a variety of reasons—first, because the development of seismology has been stimulated for decades by funding to improve the ability to monitor nuclear test explosions;1 and second because policymakers sometimes interact intensively with seismologists who bring their specialized skills to bear on the analysis of a particular seismic event by detecting, locating, and identifying it and estimating its yield if the event appears to have been an explosion.2 Given that seismology is recognized as the most important technology for monitoring nuclear explosions, a third reason for seismologists to pay attention to the CTBT is that ongoing professional assessments of monitoring capability are needed for serious discussion and decisions on whether this treaty is adequately verifiable. This latter reason may be particularly salient during the next few years, as the pros and cons of the treaty are likely to …