Seismic travel-times to east Papua from USSR nuclear explosions

Created 17/10/2025

Updated 17/10/2025

Recordings of P seismic waves from a Novaya Zemlya nuclear explosion at 26 sites on the east Papuan peninsula show that there are significant apparent departures (residuals) from travel-times calculated using average earth models. The residual at Port Moresby (PMG) differs by between +0.3 and +0.5 seconds from previous attempts to assign a station effect there. Without precise times and locations of the Novaya Zemlya events it is not possible to determine the proportions of the residual due to source effects and velocity anomalies in the mantle. It is shown that complex crustal structure in the east Papuan region accounts for a significant proportion of the station residuals, which differ from the PMG residual by between -0.72 seconds and +1.41 seconds. There is a tendency towards more negative residuals on the northeast side of the Papuan peninsula.

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Field Value
Title Seismic travel-times to east Papua from USSR nuclear explosions
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/eca053d5-a3b9-46b1-9444-8e3c2ce11eb9
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 20/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        145.0,
        -11.0
      ],
      [
        152.0,
        -11.0
      ],
      [
        152.0,
        -6.0
      ],
      [
        145.0,
        -6.0
      ],
      [
        145.0,
        -11.0
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "Seismic travel-times to east Papua from USSR nuclear explosions". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/seismic-travel-times-to-east-papua-from-ussr-nuclear-explosions