Rayleigh and acoustic gravity waves detection on magnetograms during the Japanese Tsunami, 2011

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that Rayleigh and acoustic gravity waves can be detected in geomagnetic field data prior to a tsunami, highlighting the potential of geomagnetic monitoring for early warning and modeling of tsunami-induced ionospheric disturbances.

Contribution

First detection of Rayleigh and acoustic gravity waves in geomagnetic data caused by the 2011 Japanese tsunami, suggesting geomagnetic monitoring for tsunami prediction.

Findings

Waves detected minutes to hours before tsunami arrival

Geomagnetic data can serve as an early warning tool

Supports modeling of tsunami-induced ionospheric disturbances

Abstract

The continuous geomagnetic field survey holds an important potential in future prevention of tsunami damages, and also, it could be used in tsunami forecast. In this work, we were able to detected for the first time Rayleigh and ionospheric acoustic gravity wave propagation in the Z-component of the geomagnetic field due to the Japanese tsunami, 2011 prior to the tsunami arrival. The geomagnetic measurements were obtained in the epicentral near and far-field. Also, these waves were detected within minutes to few hours of the tsunami arrival. For these reasons, these results are very encouraging, and confirmed that the geomagnetic field monitoring could play an important role in the tsunami warning systems, and also, it could provide additional information in the induced ionospheric wave propagation models due to tsunamis.