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2 years ago in Atmospheric Science , Space Weather & Geophysics By Rohini Singh
Is there a connection between tsunamis and the ionosphere?
In my geophysics readings, I keep seeing references to ionospheric perturbations detected after major tsunamis like the 2004 Indian Ocean event. This seems counterintuitive a water wave affecting a layer of the atmosphere hundreds of kilometers up. I'm trying to bridge the conceptual gap between the oceanographic event and the atmospheric response to understand the coupling mechanism.
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By Govind Answered 2 years ago
From my experience in atmospheric dynamics, this is a fascinating example of cross-domain coupling. The connection isn't direct. A massive tsunami displaces the ocean surface, which in turn pushes against the lower atmosphere, launching a weak internal gravity wave. Because atmospheric density decreases exponentially with height, this wave's amplitude grows as it propagates upwards. By the time it reaches the thin plasma of the ionosphere, 80-300 km up, its displacement is significant enough to perturb the local densities of electrons and ions, which we can detect using networks of GPS receivers as subtle signal delays.
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