• DOI:10.1111/j.1945-5100.2006.tb00485.x
• Corpus ID: 54627116

The rate of small impacts on Earth

@article{Bland2006TheRO,
  title={The rate of small impacts on Earth},
  author={Philip A. Bland and Natalya A. Artemieva},
  journal={Meteoritics \& Planetary Science},
  year={2006},
  volume={41}
}

• P. Bland, Natalya A. Artemieva
• Published 1 April 2006
• Geology, Environmental Science, Physics
• Meteoritics & Planetary Science

Abstract— Asteroids tens to hundreds of meters in diameter constitute the most immediate impact hazard to human populations, yet the rate at which they arrive at Earth's surface is poorly known. Astronomic observations are still incomplete in this size range; impactors are subjected to disruption in Earth's atmosphere, and unlike the Moon, small craters on Earth are rapidly eroded. In this paper, we first model the atmospheric behavior of iron and stony bodies over the mass range 1–1012 kg (size range 6 cm‐1 km) taking into account deceleration, ablation, and fragmentation. Previous models in meteoritics deal with rather small masses (<105–106 kg) with the aim of interpreting registered fireballs in atmosphere, or with substantially larger objects without taking into account asteroid disruption to model cratering processes. A few earlier attempts to model terrestrial crater strewn fields did not take into account possible cascade fragmentation. We have performed large numbers of simulations in a wide mass range, using both the earlier “pancake” models and also the separated fragments model to develop a statistical picture of atmosphere‐bolide interaction for both iron and stony impactors with initial diameters up to ˜1 km. Second, using a compilation of data for the flux at the upper atmosphere, we have derived a cumulative size‐frequency distribution (SFD) for upper atmosphere impactors. This curve is a close fit to virtually all of the upper atmosphere data over 16 orders of magnitude. Third, we have applied our model results to scale the upper atmosphere curve to a flux at the Earth's surface, elucidating the impact rate of objects <1 km diameter on Earth.