The AIR team just released a new preprint Infrasound waveguides on Venus could enable the detection of explosive volcanism using balloons (Gullbekk et al., 2026)! In this contribution we assess the presence of long-range infrasound waveguides on Venus through numerical simulations and realistic season-dependent atmospheric models. We highlighted the presence of efficient waveguides near the night-day terminators. These numerical simulations further enabled the assessment of the detectability of volcanoes from balloon platforms.
The prevalence of explosive volcanism on Venus is poorly constrained due to a lack of in-situ and remote sensing data. Balloon‑borne pressure sensors in the middle atmosphere have the potential to detect infrasound from eruptions and thereby probe volcanic activity. In the current work, infrasound propagation is modeled using global wind and temperature fields from the Venus Climate Database, combined with an extension to the ray-based tau-p approach, as well as transmission loss simulations. We discover that strong zonal superrotation and subsolar‑to‑antisolar circulation generate persistent acoustic waveguides capable of channeling atmospheric infrasound in both zonal and meridional directions. To assess volcanic detectability, we couple global transmission loss estimates to a source model, relating Volcanic Explosivity Index to erupted mass, mass-flux histories, source pressure spectra, and Venus eruption statistics. Our statistical framework produces probability estimates of detecting at least one volcano for any target Signal-to-Noise Ratio for different balloon trajectories and mission durations. The results indicate that, for realistic noise levels, 6-month long balloon missions at ~60 km altitude can achieve up to 80% detection probability if only high-altitude volcanoes are considered. The detection rate varies with eruption duration, which drives the eruption pressure in our model. When considering long-duration eruptions, the detection probability drops below 30%, but it can reach 99% if all large volcanoes are considered active. The findings demonstrate that future long‑duration balloon missions equipped with infrasound pressure sensors have great potential to provide novel data to constrain the rate and spatial distribution of explosive volcanism on Venus.
- Gullbekk, S. B., Brissaud, Q., Froment, M., Lefevre, M., Iezzi, A. M., & Näsholm, S. P. (2026). Infrasound waveguides on Venus could enable the detection of explosive volcanism using balloons. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.