IONOGLOW: new insight for ionospheric detection of tsunamis by airglow camera from space

Detection of ionospheric anomalies following the Sumatra and Tohoku earthquakes (e.g., Occhipinti 2015) demonstrated that ionosphere is sensitive to tsunami propagation: oceanic vertical displacement induces internal gravity waves propagating within the neutral atmosphere and detectable in the ionosphere. Observations supported by modelling proved that ionospheric anomalies related to tsunamis are deterministic and reproducible by numerical modeling via the ocean/neutral-atmosphere/ionosphere coupling mechanism (Occhipinti et al., 2008).

During Tohoku event, in 2011, new exciting measurements were performed by airglow cameras in Hawaii: those measurements show the propagation of the internal gravity waves induced by the Tohoku tsunami in the Pacific Ocean and modifying the airglow emission at 630nm mostly located at 250 km of altitude (Makela et al., 2011; Occhipinti et al., 2011). This revolutionary imaging technique is today supported by two new observations of moderate tsunamis: Queen Charlotte, M: 7.7, 27 October, 2013, and Chile, M: 8.2, 16 September 2015 (Grawe & Makela, 2015, 2017).

The potential idea to put an airglow camera on a satellite opens new exciting perspectives for tsunami detection. In this talk we present all this new tsunami observations by airglow camera, and we explore and detail the new perspective, and the technical and the physical constrains, to use an on-boarded airglow camera. We explored the orbit possibilities, as well as the effect of magnetic field and the propagation geometry, and the quantification of the observable airglow emission from space to maximize the observation of the tsunami signal by on-boarded airglow camera and to improve the oceanic monitoring and future tsunami warning system.

All ref. here @ www.ipgp.fr/~ninto