Reply to “Comment on ‘Advanced Seismic Analyses of the Source Characteristics of the 2006 and 2009 North Korean Nuclear Tests’ by J. R. Murphy, J. L. Stevens, B. C. Kohl, and T. J. Bennett” by H. J. Patton and F. V. Pabian

摘要

We would like to thank Patton and Pabian (2014; hereafter referred to as PP14) for their comments and for calling our attention to some of the unresolved issues and uncertainties associated with characterizing the sources of underground nuclear tests in remote and limited access areas based on available seismic and other data resources. Although they raise a number of issues regarding event locations, surface-wave excitation, and explosion yields, we believe that the results presented in our original paper (Murphy et al., 2013; hereafter referred to as M13) for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests are generally accurate and within the range of uncertainties for determining the source characteristics of these events. We find a number of the arguments offered by PP14, particularly with regard to absolute event locations and ground truth (GT), causes of anomalous M_s observations, and transportability of magnitude–yield relationships to be unconvincing. In the following response, we address the significant points raised by PP14 regarding these various issues and what we view as limitations on their findings.