Seismoacoustic coupling induced by the breakup of the 15 February 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor

Abstract

On 15 February 2013 around 03:20:00 UTC, the largest meteor reported since the 1908 Tunguska event was observed as a fireball traveling through the Earth's atmosphere, exploding in an air burst near the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. The rarity of such an event provides a unique window on the physics of meteoroid collision. We report the fine seismic detection of Rayleigh waves produced by the coupling of ground motion with the incident shock wave at distances up to 4000 km from the event. Combining information from seismic beam‐forming analysis, reconstructed trajectory from casual video records, and remote sensing, we identify the Rayleigh waves as being initiated by the shock wave produced by the main blast that occasioned damages and injuries in Chelyabinsk. From the Rayleigh wave observations, we report a magnitude Ms∼3.7 seismic source.