[J04-6] Geohazard early warning systems VI

[J04-6-04] Real-Time Detection of Tsunami Ionospheric Disturbances with Stand-Alone GNSS Receivers

^○Giorgio Savastano^{1, 2}, Attila Komjathy², Olga Verkhoglyadova², Yong Wei^3,4, Augusto Mazzoni¹, Mattia Crespi¹ (1.Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering, University of Rome, La Sapienza, Rome, Italy, 2.Ionospheric and Atmospheric Remote Sensing Group, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA, 3.Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Seattle, WA, USA, 4.Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO), University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)

Tsunamis can produce gravity waves that propagate up to the ionosphere generating disturbed electron densities in the E and F regions. These ionospheric disturbances are studied in detail using ionospheric total electron content (TEC) measurements collected by continuously operating ground-based receivers from the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). Here, we present results using a new approach, also known as VARION (Variometric Approach for Real-Time Ionosphere Observation), and for the first time, we estimate slant TEC (sTEC) variations in a real-time scenario from GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou constellations. Specifically, we study the 2016 New Zealand tsunami event using 1-Hz real-time data recorded from several GNSS receivers with multi-constellation tracking capabilities located in the Pacific region. We compare estimates of sTEC variations obtained using GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou constellations. We observe sTEC perturbations with amplitudes up to 0.8 TEC units that correlate well in time and space with the propagating tsunami waves. The efficiency of the real-time sTEC estimation using the VARION algorithm has been demonstrated for the 2012 Haida Gwaii tsunami event. We conclude that the integration of different satellite constellations is a crucial step forward to increasing the reliability of real-time tsunami detection systems using ground-based GNSS receivers as an augmentation to existing tsunami early warning systems.